India - Rajasthan Part1 - The 'Pink City' & 'Venice of The East'

The train from Agra to Jaipur was certainly an experience. The train tickets were pre booked days in advance, but due to the road linking the 2 cities being closed as a result of land disputes going on, there were no buses running so everyone had piled onto the trains. This meant we couldn't get tickets for the relatively comfortable air conditioned carriages with individual seats. Second prize was the non a/c carriages with bench seats, seat numbered so as to indicate 3 people per bench, though in reality there were a minimum of 5 crammed onto each row, with every bit of floor space completely taken up by the standing passengers and all exits doors, wide open and several people hanging outside. Thankfully there was no glass in the windows, just bars across them which apart from making you feel like we were in some hellishly overcrowded prison cell, did actually allow some air flow (albeit 44 degree air that didn't really offer any cooling potential) and so we trundled for the next 7 hours..

The heaps of litter that lined the sides of the tracks on the way out of Agra coupled with the stagnant black swampy streams that ran alongside the tracks, clogged with human waste and litter contributed to some already pretty funky aromas that were going on inside the carriage. Once again the only westerners on the train, we initially tried to just blend in and make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible by quietly reading our books, which was obviously impossible, as we soon became the centre of attention for all the people around us, whether they spoke English or not. Squashed in against 2 old holy guys, dressed in little more than their loin cloths, all wild hair and unkempt beards, we felt strangely at home..... we ended up spending the majority of the journey chatting to a young lad called Krishna, originally from one of the farming villages just out of Agra, now completing a degree in mechanical engineering in Jaipur. He told us how the majority of people from his village were illiterate and how he was the only person from there to have attended university or really completed any form of formal education. He then acted as translator between us and the non English speaking guys we were nestled against.

Our guesthouse, the ‘Krishna Palace', was a beautiful old heritage building with enormous rambling rooms and bathrooms, with the best shower we have had for some time. The peace and tranquility of the guesthouse proved too good to resist on the first day, choosing to drift between the roof terrace restaurant, gardens and air conditioned room.

By day two we made our way out to the ' Amber Palace’, a beautiful old medieval palace/ castle perched on a hillside out of town. Making our way through the old walled ‘pink’ city centre, we pass by all sorts of traffic, from camels pulling flat bed trailers loaded with building supplies, to cows towing trailers loaded with marble, elephants taxiing people through the city, to every conceivable type of bike, car, bus & rickshaw - making for a pretty eclectic mix. Visiting temples with the entire interior decorated in a host of multi coloured mirrors, palaces constructed in the middle of desert lakes, forts atop several hills and a giant defence wall lining the edges of the mountains, this is a place with a very grand history.

In the centre of the old town is an astrological observatory, Jantar Mantar, created in the 1700's, with all manner of odd looking stone and marble constructions that indicate the correct time to within a tolerance of 2 seconds, show the angle of inclination of the sun and the degrees at which the earth is orbiting the sun, as well as providing details on the 12 astrological signs and playing host to the world’s largest sun dial at some 23 metres high. Astrology remains an important facet in the lives of many Hindus and nothing happens without consulting the astrological charts. The charts/calendar is consulted before making any important decisions i.e weddings can only happen on auspicious dates and times of the year to ensure a happy and fruitful life, the charts of individuals are consulted before assessing compatability for an arranged marriage or for opening a business or moving house.

The most distinctive landmark in Jaipur however, is the Hawa Mahal, a huge 5 storey building, also built in the 1700’s, with a honeycomb appearance where women of the Royal household could watch the world pass by below through one of the many windows without the persons on the street below knowing they were there.

We manage to get ourselves booked onto the night bus to the city of Udaipur and arranged to meet up with Krishna again for some food in town, at a place we discovered that does the best chicken tandoori and tikka in India, at the cheapest prices. Completely stuffed from all the food, we prepared ourselves for another sleepless night on the bus, no doubt as the centre of attention yet again to all the locals.

We had been reliably informed by absolutely everyone that the night bus from Jaipur would arrive at about 8-9am… unbelievably, it actually pulled into the station at 4.30am and we were left with the prospect of finding somewhere to stay in the pitch black while everyone was sleeping. It didn’t take long for someone to find us and convince us that he was manager of a guesthouse and they had rooms and so we checked in to get some sleep. What they failed to tell us before check in was that the Indian government has imposed mandatory power cuts on certain places to save energy, and Udaipur’s time was from 9-11am but this particular morning it went from 8-12, meaning our nicely air conditioned room very quickly became an unbearable sauna as the temperature quickly got up into the mid 40's outside.

Udaipur is located on a beautiful lake town and known as the ‘Venice of the East’, India's city of romance, and was one of the main homes to the old ruling elite/ royalty of Rajasthan, the Maharaja's. It has India’s largest palace overlooking a lake, as well as a palace in the lake alongside the iconic lake palace hotel, which famously featured in the James Bond film, Octopussy. Many of the old narrow winding streets and alleys with their grand old architecture were featured in the film, and the town still trades fairly heavily on its Bond fame with many restaurants and guesthouse showing the film every night on their roof top terraces.

It is also a place of great colour, the locals dressing in all manner of brightly coloured saris, kurta's and turbans to signify their marital status, parenthood status, ethnic origin and what they are celebrating/mourning. There are also far more woman seen out and about here than the other places we have been in India so far. India obviously being a heavily male dominated society, it still comes as a surprise to see quite so many men everywhere and quite so few women. Udaipur definitely makes a refreshing change on this front, and the woman are a big part of the reason why this place is so colourful and has a more relaxed and balanced feel to it.

Being India's desert state, Rajasthan depends heavily on a good monsoon each year to provide the necessary amounts of water needed to survive but unfortunately the last five years has not really delivered on this front so living conditions in certain areas become increasingly difficult. The area is very barren and dry and the lakes that Udaipur is so synonymous with are currently only about 1/3 full. All the locals keep asking us why we haven't brought the rain with us like the English used to do whenever they travelled anywhere – there’s certainly rain to spare in the UK these days.

We spent a great few days soaking up the atmosphere of Udaipur, exploring the huge ornate City Palace, strolling through the many bazaars and spice markets, hanging with the locals down at the lakeshore for sunset and having a go of their handmade instruments which when played by them sound fantastic; though when played by the likes of us sound worse than a violin being learnt by a child. On one of Claire's previous trips to India she had bought me a sitar, though I never really had a clue how to play it, so while here I also took some lessons - I’m not quite Ravi Shanka yet but it's certainly pointed me in the right direction!