Jodhpur, India

We were laggards in Udaipur on Thursday morning, not rousing ourselves to curbside until 9:30 am. We were in for a long drive, mostly on very narrow, mountainous roads in the back country of Rajasthan. It was tedious in many ways, but what we saw of true country life on the farms and villages of rural India was eye-opening.

Almost immediately I got to learn a little more about the propensity some Indian motorists have for driving on the wrong side of the median on a divided highway. Before we got to the single lane part of the journey, we drove for a short distance on a divided highway and I was surprised to see a bus come careening down an entrance ramp that we were simultaneously careening up. I looked at Sanju, and he just shrugged. It turns out that sometimes drivers go down entrance ramps or come up exit ramps (both of which are theoretically one way in the opposite direction) simply because it seems like an easier thing to do. In either case, they have to drive on the wrong side of the highway for a ways in order to make such a maneuver pay off.

Just as I was marveling at how crazy this behavior is, Sanju screeched to a stop, pulled over and after shaking his head for one moment, began to do something that, prior to India, we’d only seen on very rare occasions in southern Italy and Greece. This was something I assumed I would never be part of in my entire life, but here I was, in a car charging madly in reverse the wrong way on a divided highway. I thought I’d gotten used to incessant honking already, but the cacophony that greeted that particular exercise was deafening.

My main memories of the next few hours of driving on a paved road that was not wide enough for two cars at one time were the colors of the saris worn by the women of Rajasthan, along with the incredibly primitive methods of farming we witnessed. I did not see a tractor until late in the day, but I saw plenty of fields being worked by oxen, lots of loads on carts being pulled by camels or donkeys, waterwheels being turned by teams of oxen, loads of straw, hay, water and milk being carried on the heads of men, women and children, cows herded by children, large flocks of sheep milling about the road, and, in every village, and even on many of the farms, people sitting on their haunches simply staring at the road.

In some ways it all seemed idyllic, but the obvious reality was a whole class of very poor people trying to scratch out a subsistence under very trying conditions.

After a few hours we arrived at the Kumbalgarh fort, which we toured and photographed for an hour or so. The walls of that fort enclose a very large area, and our guide book claimed the wall was still intact and you could walk all 38km of it if you so chose. We did have time to do so on this trip, but it’s something that would be fun to try sometime. The guide book also claimed that you could hike cross country from Kumbalgarh to a large Jain temple complex at Ranakpur, a hike that should take 4-5 hours. Assuming that the guide book is being pretty conservative, that would make the distance between the two places about 25 km.

Sanju told us we would visit Ranakpur next, so I assumed we would be there in 30-45 minutes, given how close Rough Guide claimed the two were to each other. But we drove for an hour and a half, up mountain and down, in and out of jungles, before we finally got to Ranakpur.

Halfway between the two places, in the middle of nowhere, on a road where we had seen precious few vehicles going in either direction, we came upon two kids selling a type of fresh fruit that Sanju could not give us the name for. He stopped, pinched a bud of fruit from one of their samples, decided it was OK, gave it to us to try, we thought it tasted interesting, so I asked him how much I should give the girl. He said 10 Rupees (which is pretty much the going rate for everything in India), but when he handed her the 10 Rupee note, she started screaming at him and even as he accelerated away, she kept running beside the car absolutely screaming at the top of her lungs. I asked Sanju if we should pay her more money, but he just smiled at me and said “Kids!” and finally pulled away from the poor thing.

I’m not sure what that was all about, but it’s becoming more and more clear how fraught with difficulty commerce is in this inscrutable land.

Ranakpur Temple was interesting, but I had already started burning out on Temples, so I can’t tell you much about it except that we had to remove shoes, we were supposed to remove our leather belts, entry was free for people but each camera had to pay 50 Rupees and once inside we were accosted by Jain acolytes who wanted to provide “free” guide services to us. We are much more clever than we look and by this time we had way figured out that “free” implies anything from 10 to 1000 Rupees.

The main Jain temple at Ranakpur, built in 1439, was interesting in that the sacred number 72 was utilized in many of its dimensions. It is 72 yards square, inside are 72 elaborately carved shrines, the main statue is 72 inches tall, and it contains 1440 pillars (72 times 20). The reason for this over-focus on a pretty mundane number is that Mahavira, the founder of Jainism was a very stodgy 72 years of age when he achieved nirvana. This fact gives me some hope, because I sometimes think I have a new religion in me but now I know I can wait another 10 years or so before I have to codify it.

It was way past our lunch time, but Sanju had trouble finding a suitable restaurant for us, finally settling on one that clearly caters only to tourists and served food so bland that I’m guessing that even a person suffering from a double ulcer would have asked for some Tabasco. I convinced the waiter-wallah to bring me an Indian spice sauce and that helped.

The last four hours of our drive to Jodhpur consisted of passing a truck every thirty seconds or so, always into oncoming traffic, with the car always lugging because it was overgeared and with no apparent need for any more acceleration than was necessary to get us back in our lane with inches between us and the oncoming vehicle. This infuriating habit of lugging the engine and failure to accelerate seems to be a trait of private drivers here because Ashraf does the exact same thing.

In Jodhpur Sanju treated us to yet another traffic maneuver I thought I would never be part of by turning onto the wrong side of a divided boulevard and proceeding to drive against traffic for a couple of hundred yards to get to our hotel. This maneuver was in lieu of driving about 100 feet past the hotel and making a U-turn to come back in the proper lane. I don’t know why it was so important for Sanju to do this, but it sure was exciting.

On Friday morning, after our breakfast at the upscale Plaza Park Hotel in Jodhpur, we met Vijay, our guide for the day and a real Lady’s Man, at least according to him. Vijay took us to the Meherangarh Fort, one of the top 41 attractions in all of India according to the Rough Guide. The fort was pretty cool and Vijay was quite knowledgeable, not only about the Fort but about all of Indian history. This fort has a fascinating history that I’ll have to get back to you on.

Unlike many of the attractions we were to visit on our sashay through Rajasthan, this one was still populated mostly by Indian tourists rather than foreign ones, and Peggy got to play her Angelina role once again.

Jodhpur is famous for two things – funny pants and buildings with blue roofs. Looking down at the village from the Fort, it was clear that many of the buildings were in fact an indigo color. Vijay gave us an explanation for this that didn’t make any sense (and therefore I don’t remember), but our two guide books made contrary claims – once said the blue color was thought to deter insects, while the other one claimed it was used to mask the inferior quality of the building materials used in those environs.

As you may recall, we were distressed to discover that guides in India are in complete cahoots with many local businesses (especially local crafts manufacturers). We were determined to circumvent this problem by going to a store we had seen recommended in Rough Guide so Peggy could look at some Salwar Kameezs. If that name does not ring a bell, than how about Punjabi Dress? Still wondering? A Punjabi Dress (more properly called a Salwar Kameez), looks like a pair of pajamas (and in fact is the root of the word “pajamas”, a detail that I had deduced of my own volition and that was later confirmed by extensive Internet research). The outfit consists of a pair of light cloth balloon pants and a tunic top that extends to just above or just below the knee. You can also add a Dupatta to it, which is a long scarf either worn around the neck or, more commonly, wrapped around the head in semi-veil-like fashion. The pants are hilarious to look at when unworn, because the waist is big enough to fit 2-3 normal size women into. Apparently, the gathering effect is part of the fashion statement.

Vijay told us where a great place was for these outfits, but we were suspicious of his motives, so we asked to be taken to Raju’s, our Rough Guide’s suggestion. Vijay shrugged in disappointment, but we were the sahibs, so Raju’s is where we went.

Peggy tried on some of the SKs, and liked two of them. One had to be modified to add sleeves and lengthen the pants. This entire 3-piece ensemble was going for the princessly sum of $12, free alterations included. For some reason, Vijay picked this moment to mutter about how tourists always make mistakes when shopping in Jodhpur. My feeling was that the outfit could disintegrate before Peggy ever got to wear it and it would still be a bargain at $12, but Vijay was itching for a fight, so I asked him why he was so unhappy that we were buying clothes at Raju’s.

He trotted out the old saw about how tourist’s get romanced by these guide books and then make horrible mistakes instead of taking the local guide’s advice on where to shop. I asked how he could possibly do better than $12 for an SK, and he made the bold claim that he knew a place that was better AND cheaper. So we decided to call his bluff.

He had Sanju take us to a place that was not only not open, it was unlit and had no patrons inside. As we had started to deduce, this is a tipoff that the shop is a guides-only place, meaning that the guide is a getting a commission on anything you buy. We’ve heard stories that the guides can get up to 40% (depending on how hard the mark bargains), so the financial incentive to drag us in is great.

The guy who attended to us was very attractive, very smooth and very well spoken with excellent command of the English language. I started by asking him about jodhpurs, the funny pants with big bulges at the hips. These pants were invented by Sir Pratap Singh, the brother of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II, for polo playing, but the style caught on like mad with the British and Jodhpur pants have been de rigueur for the polo- and jet-sets ever since.

Mr. Smooth had some ready-made jodhpurs, but few Indians are my height, so none of them would fit me. He naturally took this as an opportunity to try sell me a pair of custom made jodhpurs that he claimed he could have done and delivered to our hotel within 4 hours. I declined, so serve passed to Peggy. The bottom line of the Vijay challenge was that he lost big time. The quality of items we saw at his tailor shop was only marginally better than at Raju’s, but the pricing was 3-5 times higher. I resisted the temptation to ask him where the units were that were cheaper than the $12 we’d paid at Raju’s, but it was satisfaction enough to walk out without buying anything.

We twisted the knife in by declining Vijay’s favorite restaurant in favor of one called Midtown that was given a high review in Rough Guide.

Midtown was great. Pricing was very modest ($3-4 for a main course) and the food was superb. I had a local specialty called kabuli, which included rice, a variety of grilled vegetables, a spicy Indian sauce and fried bread chunks. We were the only tourists in there, the place populated strictly by locals, including a table of four Indian men who took great interest in us, guessing we were from New Zealand, then Australia before giving up. They were very friendly, but not noticeably bright and with English so poor that our attempts at conversation went unrequited.

That night we went back to Raju’s to pick up the altered suit, and experience some more Mexican-style Manana time estimates, then back to Midtown for dinner where we both ordered Thalis (plates of 6-8 types of veg dishes and sauces) and finally met our match when it came to Indian spiciness. Those dishes were excellent but just a little too hot to be truly enjoyable.

The next day would be Pushkar Camel Fair day, so we went to bed with visions of Camels dancing in our heads.

I'm trying to do a better job filtering the pictures I post:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622622703729/