Udaipur, India

Having been disappointed by my Canon camera’s battery malfeasance during the visit to Ellora, once we left the caves I asked Ashraf to find a place in Aurangabad where I could buy a new rechargeable battery. And so began the great camera store chase in which we visited innumerable shops, asked countless questions, were given incalculable different answers and were taken on immeasurable wild goose chases. At one shop every single employee (Peggy counted 10) was gathered around to try to help. Some shopkeepers told us we would find no such thing in Aurangabad, others called everyone in their phone register, a few sent runners to find the reclusive battery and still others just directed us one or two shops down the street where the proprietor invariably would do the same.

I finally realized there would be no new camera battery in the offing but I gained some satisfaction by imagining how many phone calls were made to the Canon distributor that night reporting on the incredible demand for a certain type of battery in Aurangabad and by the massive increase in battery production that must have been ordered by the CEO of Canon Worldwide simply by virtue of our incessant search.

After a well deserved rest at the hotel, we directed Ashraf to take us to a restaurant called Tandoor that our Rough Guide had recommended. We’ve used Rough Guides in the past and found them to be generally in synch with our own sensibilities, so we wanted to give this place a try.

Ashraf asked at least a dozen different times how to get to the restaurant. The Rough Guide included a small map of Aurangabad with the location of Tandoor marked on it, but Ashraf has no use for maps, preferring to ask Indians on the street, then invariably shaking his head about how unclearly each interviewee had described the route to the café.

Ashraf made one last, fateful stop to ask for directions and something happened there that Peggy and I promised Ashraf we would not tell anyone about because if his boss ever hears about it, he will fire Ashraf on the spot. So I can’t tell you what happened, and if you happen to figure out what happened, I will deny that it did. But I can relay a brief story about the time when I was 20 years old and working for Green Giant in LeSeuer, Minnesota. I was working on prototype gizmos to attach to pea combine machines so the machines could be operated at peak efficiency.

One morning I drove my little Rambler station wagon out to a pea field in the country where the crew was harvesting peas. Being less bright then than I am now, I managed to pull off the country road in such a way that my right front wheel dropped into a deep irrigation ditch which I just flat didn’t see. With the right wheel dangling in mid air and the tailgate of my wagon pointing at the sky, I knew right away I was not going to just back myself out of that predicament. I tried, but it was clear I would need some help. I ruefully made my way to the spot where all the local farmers were chewing the fat and explained my lame-brained act. After some good natured, but rather pointed, joshing, the farmers had a free for all trying to gain the honor of being the one who pulled my car out of the ditch. Everybody raced to his tractor, but the guy who got to me first had the privilege of yanking me out of harm’s way and back onto the road.

Now, nothing like that happened in Aurangabad that night, but if it had, it would not have been surprising if 12-15 Indian men would have gathered immediately, and after surveying the situation for a minute or two, you can imagine that they might have all gotten on the side of the car whose wheel was dangling in a drainage ditch. And you could probably guess that with that many men lifting and pushing it would not have been a problem to get the car back on all four wheels and onto the road. And then, had anything like that happened, maybe a few of the Indian men would have gathered around the two very obviously not-Indian people to ask where they were from. And perhaps one of the Indian men would have said something like “Welcome to India!” and another might have said “See how helpful Indians are?” And most likely we would have said something like “Thank you very much! Namaste!”

But because our official story, which we are sticking to, is that nothing like that did happen while we were in Aurangabad, that chain of events is strictly hypothetical.

Dinner was anti-climatic, but excellent. We had the sizzling Tandoori platter (chicken prepared about a thousand ways plus a few pieces of mutton sausage just to throw your taste buds off) and it was very nice.

On Sunday we visited the Bibi-ka-Maqbara mosque, a building that has a certain resemblance to the Taj Mahal, although the proportions of the towers compared to the mausoleum are weird making it appear that the towers are always closer to you than they actually are. This thing was built by Prince Azam Shah, grandson of Shah Jahan, who commissioned the Taj Mahal, so it’s resemblance to the Taj is not just coincidental. Peggy reprised her role of Angelina Jolie and I was asked to appear in enough Indian photos that I upgraded myself from Tom Skerrit to David Straitharn.

On Monday Ashraf drove me to the Landmark department store in Pune so I could buy a new camera. I had been so disappointed in my old Canon battery’s recalcitrance that I decided to upgrade myself. My new Sony DSC-TX1 is almost sophisticated enough to take pictures on its own, and it certainly has a better inbred sense of aesthetics than do I. I’m sure many cameras sport this feature now, but it has a smile mode wherein if you point the camera at a face and the owner of that face smiles broadly enough, the camera will decide when the smile is just right and snap the shutter without any interaction from any human fingers. Scary.

When I picked up Peggy Monday night at Avaya, I had to wend my way through a Bollywood film crew that had created a large set on part of the main circle that houses most of the high tech offices in Magarpatta City. Someone told me the name of the main star of the movie, but I don’t know one Indian actor from the next, so it was lost on me. Actually, I do know who Shah Rukh Khan is, because I’ve seen him in a number of Indian movies that we’ve watched over the past year, and his face is EVERYWHERE here. Not only does he appear to be in almost every Indian movie, it seems as though he represents darn nearly every Indian consumer product as well. He’s kind of like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and George Clooney all rolled into one.

Speaking of Shah Rukh Khan, an unfortunate little anecdote about him, that every Indian seems to know, illustrates the love-hate relationship many Indians appear to have with the USA. It seems that SRK (as the pop magazines call him) flew into New York not long ago and because he has an unfortunate surname (Khan, which is normally a Muslim name), he was profiled by the authorities and held for extensive questioning despite his pleas that he was one of the most famous actors in Indian. This story has been relayed to us numerous times and it’s clear that it rankles the average Indian. The fact that people who look different or have different names are routinely profiled and grilled is annoying enough, but the fact that apparently no one in Homeland Security has any clue about Bollywood stars seems to be particularly galling.

At any rate, after picking Peggy up, we were unable to cross back through the set because they actually started shooting and burly Indian guards were quite clear in their intention to keep anyone from disturbing the action.

Tuesday came earlier than normal for us. We were flying to Udaipur from Mumbai that day, and Ashraf correctly calculated that it would take us 4 hours to traverse the 150 km (with heavy city traffic at both ends) to the Mumbai airport.

Once we left Pune, the highway to Mumbai took on a distinctly familiar look and feel. The road was wide and well-paved, people actually drove like civilized humans, the traffic was very light, and there were no trucks or two wheelers anywhere to be seen. Ashraf was quieter than normal and finally let slip that he had to stay in Mumbai until his company could find a paying customer that he could bring back to Pune with him. He claimed that his boss had a rule that you could not drive any empty car from Mumbai to Pune. I don’t know if that is really true or if it was a ploy to try to get us to agree to pay to have the car driven back to Mumbai empty.

We don’t actually know too much about the costs of having a driver here. It could be that we will be presented with a bill for many thousands of dollars when we leave, but right now we’re under the impression that a car and driver costs about $20 per day. Even so, we decided not to bite and simply thanked Ashraf for bringing us to the airport and wished him luck in getting home.

Here’s a surprise. Our flight was late leaving Mumbai. Despite anything you believe about the unreliability of airlines in the US, they keep stellar schedules in comparison to domestic Indian flights, almost all of which seem to operate on some variation of Manana Time. The good news is that you get a free snack if your flight is delayed, so the snack bar in the waiting area was continually mobbed.

Even more surprising, on a flight that lasted all of 1 hour, the crew tried to serve lunch to a completely packed airplane. Lunch was nothing more than bland rice and equally bland Dal, but it seemed weird to be sitting in coach class, with seemingly less leg room than the back seat of Peggy’s Audi TT offers, and having any type of sustenance presented at all. The plane was near touchdown before all the lunches had been served, so there was a mad dash amongst the attendants to get every tray table cleared off before the wheels screeched on the macadam.

Our temporary driver, Sanju, had his “Welcome Gary Koenig” sign in his hands (remember this is still a very male oriented society) so we found him with no trouble. The drive into Udaipur was refreshingly sane, but once he got into the city, the streets narrowed considerably and the battles he fought with oncoming bikes and autos were ferocious. As another example of the slow pace of motoring in India, Sanju told us he lived in Delhi and had made the 700 Km drive down to Udaipur in 12 hours.

Surprisingly, we arrived at our quaint hotel, the Udai Kothi, without dying. As we registered a drink-wallah appeared with a tray and two small glasses of dark liquid. He told us he had welcoming drinks for us. Assuming it was some type of tea, I asked what it was and he said “Pepsi”. Why Pepsi is considered a particularly apt welcoming drink in Rajasthan is beyond my comprehension. After unpacking and unwinding, we had dinner in the open air restaurant on the roof and enjoyed some live music from a santoor (similar to a hammered dulcimer) and a set of tabla drums. Strictly instrumental, the music sounded exactly like what you would expect to hear in India. I ordered mutton sausage, which did NOT taste like chicken but was overcooked and not particularly succulent.