Chalo! Part 2

I should preface this post with a little better description of my travel partners. It does make a bit of a difference. There was me of course, another American girl, a British girl and an American boy, all friends from my fellowship program. Also with us was our Indian friend from our fellowship and I have to say at this point, I feel sorry for her. Not only did she have to do most of the bargaining and talking for us since our Hindi is nonexistent, but she had to put up with questions like "are you their guide" or "which country?" and then they would assume she was American because she was with us. Apparently Indians and Americans can't be friends. Whoops, my bad. Of course the best part would be when she would flag down a rickshaw by herself, negotiate a price for all of us and then have us come out of hiding from around the corner. You could see the rickshaw driver's face drop as he calculated just how much more money he could have squeezed out of the foreigners. But I digress. Back to the trip.

Our second morning in Jaipur found us at the "bus station" or more accurately, on one of two mini buses parked under the highway overpass. No matter though because this bus ride flew by in three hours and the warm air wafting through the window just so happened to cure my cold and cough for a few hours at least. We were on our way to Pushkar, a small town on the edge of the Thar desert, having decided Jodhpur was too far for us in our exhausted state and required too much energy. Plus we heard Pushkar was amazing, filled with holy sites, tourists, and with that, good Israeli food. Since I hadn't eaten a decent hummus in months, how could I resist?

Our hostel, the unaptly named Hotel Everest, was pleasant and within walking distance of everything we wanted to see. Of course, my head was a bit too congested to completely appreciate the view of the city and the hundreds of monkeys climbing from rooftop to rooftop but no matter. It turned out to be nothing 20 cents worth of Indian cold medicine at the pharmacy couldn't cure.

As we set off to wander the streets in the mid-afternoon, I was a bit shellshocked. Because THIS was the India we had all imagined. THIS was the place where narrow lanes bordered by fruit stands, silver shops, open air stands selling samosas, and temples were blocked by painted cows. THIS was the place where white marble steps covered in pigeon poop and cow manure led straight into the lake and pilgrims of all types came to bathe in the water. Of course, THIS was also the place that tourists had discovered and within one minute of our reaching the waterfront, an old man with paan-stained teeth approached us and led us down to the lake to perform puja or a worship ceremony. After all Pushkar is one of the holiest cities in India and the only one with the a temple devoted to the Hindu God of creation, Brahma. So it was kind of a big deal. And don't worry Mom, I didn't go into the lake itself! Instead he sat us down by the water, chanted ridiculous things in English (Happy Pamily, Black Night, 27th, Tuesday, Good Marriage, Good Karma, Welcome to Rajasthan, Namaste, How many rupees?) which made our Indian friend laugh. Puja's usually don't happen in English. Yet we perservered and still threw some flower petals into the water and emerged from the experience with bracelets and bindis and only a few less rupees in our pockets. Plus we had gotten to wander down on the ghats by the lake, which you can only really do if you are participating in Puja.

The rest of the day was spent shopping and exploring. It was the most relaxing part of the trip and people were so much friendlier here than anywhere else I had been. I'm sure some of this had to do with the fact that they really wanted us to purchase their products but no matter. The day was capped off by a wonderful dinner of hummus, pita, tzaziki, eggplant, falafel...basically all of my favorite foods on one plate. And luckily the monkey swinging precariously in the tree above us decided not to try and steal our dinner. Day one of relaxation was complete.

The next morning, my cold got the better of me and I ended up sleeping in way past what I had planned. In fact, all of my friends had gotten up at sunrise to climb up a hill to a nearby temple and I was completely oblivious to it. I was a bit disappointed to have missed it, especially after hearing their raving descriptions when we met up for breakfast, but I was feeling much better having slept. So much so in fact, I took to wandering the streets by myself for a few hours, ahead of the backpacking crowd who was still sleeping off their hangovers. As I turned a corner to the less touristy area of the town, I was met with a procession, complete with a brass band and vividly colored horses and floats. There were children dressed as Hindu gods on the backs of the horses and on the floats being carried through town. It's really something to see Laxmi drinking a juicebox.

Sufficiently cultured, I headed back to the hostel to rest up for our epic camel trek to come. Originally we were planning on doing an overnight trip but it turns out that those had been cancelled due to a robbery (again, Mom, no worries..)so we settled for a sunset trek. I have to say, having ridden horses, I thought a camel would be no big deal. But let me tell you, they are BIG! Our guides rode behind us and seemed to get a kick out of my ability to sit the camel's trot without holding on. Eventually I convinced the guide to hand over the reins and I got to steer Johnny (my camel) myself. We rode through rural land where the "gypsy workers" set up their makeshift camps. By sunset we hopped off the camels to enjoy a contraband beer (alcohol and meat are both prohibited in Pushkar due to religious reasons but honestly, you can find the former easily enough). While we were sitting in the sand and nursing our sore legs, an older man and three raggedly dressed kids came over from their nearby tent and sat down by us. The man started to play his sitar but we asked him to stop, not really wanting to see the kids being forced to dance for us. But a few minutes later, he started up again and the kids began to dance, giggling the whole time. The only way I can describe it is as a bizarre scene. Against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful sunsets of my life, three eight year olds essentially spun around in the sand to surprisingly moving music, while five camels munched on grass behind us. It's moments like these when I am hit with the realization that yes, I am definitely in India.

Our guides then told us to hurry up so we could get back before dark. Of course, when I said I was ready to go fast, I didn't realize we would be racing. But I was game. Running on a camel though is a different story. A camel's galloping stride is probably double that of a horse and at least twice as bumpy. While we won the race, I almost fell off in the process. The prospect of falling 15 feet to hard packed dirt definitely scared me for a minute. And all too soon we were back in the city, hobbling toward our hostel for our 5AM wakeup before catching a bus to Udaipur. I was sorry to leave Pushkar and not exactly looking forward to another 7 hour bus ride. But I hadn't come all this way to spend my days vegging out by a holy lake. It was time to see the Venice of the East!

I will skip the long bus ride through the greenery of southern Rajasthan and bring you straight to Udaipur. Udaipur is the home of the Maharana, not to be confused with the Maharaja. Maharajan kings were eventually conquered by Muslim empires whereas Maharana were not. Therefore, Maharana = better warrior which is why Udaipur's symbol is the horse, representing power.The other two parts of this trilogy are the elephant representing Jaipur and luck, and the camel which is the symbol of the desert city of Jaisalmar near the Pakistani border, representing love. Anyway, Udaipur is something to be seen and I'm not sure if my descriptions will give it justice. The old city is set on along the water of a huge man-made lake with the buildings cascading down into the waterfront. Out on the lake is the famous Lake Palace Hotel which would set me back a whole month's salary for one night's stay. Beyond that is the island where the King used to go for entertaining and which now houses several world-class restaurants. But the thing about Udaipur is that it sees even more tourists than other places in Rajasthan due to its beauty. So we had quite a different experience there.

It was low season which meant that wandering around the streets was an exercise in patience. Every single shop owner asked the obligatory "which country" to which I often replied in Spanish. Or we had rickshaw drivers asking us where we wanted to go even though everything was in walking distance. "New York, 100 rupees" became my classic response which usually illicited a smile but didn't stop them from trying to convince me to go somewhere else. And the problem was that we would walk by the same shop owners several times a day. It got to the point that after bargaining at a restaurant for a bottle of beer, the next morning a shop owner who had overheard the conversation was asking us how we enjoyed the beer and whether or not we wanted to go dancing that night. But luckily we had our male friend along who in the span of a day acquired four "girlfriends" or "wives" depending on the situation.

Our first evening in Udaipur we went to a cultural dance performance. I was fully prepared for the tacky tourist trap but was pleasantly surprised. There was a dance where the women wore bells on their wrists, arms and legs and hit them impressively in time with the music. There was also an entertaining puppet dance and the best was a traditional desert dance from Jaisalmar where a woman balanced six water pots on her head all the while dancing. Cheesy as it sounds, it was honestly one of my favorite things we did in Udaipur and I couldn't help but buy a pair of Rajasthani puppets to remember my time there.

Our next day included a sunrise stroll through the city and along the lake. To say it was lovely is a bit of an understatement but it was. The mist rose off the lake and everything had that orange glow that only happens once a day. Of course the moment was dampened a bit from having to dodge around cows and manure but it was still peaceful and just what we needed before going to gawk at the amazing City Palace. Much like Jaipur's, it is luxurious beyond imagine and the current king still uses the old portion for parties. In fact, you can rent it out for several hundred thousand rupees for a night if you want your wedding there. At least the number you call to do so is toll free.

After admiring the cage where the King used to keep his tigers, the ornate stables where the horses were kept, and the elephant dueling ground, we spent the rest of the afternoon gearing up for our overnight train ride to Delhi. Mostly this meant going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant and gorging ourselves on delicious curries and chapattis to last us until the morning. And believe me, I wasn't hungry for 18 hours afterwards.

The train journey itself was fine aside from an interruption at 2AM as a man confused his compartment and demanded I show him our tickets. But at least he apologized profusely. Oh yeah, and the bugs crawling all over the floor but I prefer to supress that particular memory. And I was a bit sad to be leaving the relative peace of Rajasthan and entering the chaos of Delhi. I didn't feel prepared to face it again and judging by the nervous looks on my friend's faces as we pulled into the station, neither were they. And of course, right from the start, Delhi sucked us in. We were literally pushed off the train and out of the station by the swelling crowd and found ourselves in a taxi bound for the International Youth Hostel. We chose the hostel precisely because it was off the beaten track and was set in the lush, tree-covered lanes where all of the Embassies in the city were. But we arrived at 7:30AM only to discover that we couldn't check in until 11AM and they wouldn't even let us keep our bags in the hostel until then. There was no way we were lugging our backpacks with us. My own bag had doubled in size over the last two days and I'm fairly certain it's a bad sign if your arms go numb while carrying your pack. And there was literally no restaurant or coffee shop nearby where we could relax until then.

Sadly, we were forced to do the thing I had been trying to avoid: find a hostel in the infamous Pahar Ganj neighborhood. We found one, that was cheap but a place I wouldn't mind never seeing again. We also found the place in India where all of the scary, hippy backpackers end up. I mean, up until this point, our fellow tourists tended to be young like us and similarly outfitted. But in Delhi we saw fifty year olds who looked as though they had landed in Pahar Ganj decades ago and just never left. I haven't seen that many white dreadlocks in my life or that many dirty rucksacks lining the tables of street cafes before. On the plus side, we did meet "James Bond," an Indian auto driver who was convinced I looked like Angelina Jolie. I told him it's only because I'm white to which he replied "well yes, all white people look like celebrities." If only that were true.

After dropping our bags off at the hostel, we hopped onto Delhi's metro which is probably my favorite thing about the city. Clean, air-conditioned, and not too crowded, it is the only way to travel without getting hassled. We got off at an open-air market where life again started to look up. Bargaining has become a favorite pasttime of mine and I managed to snag a few deals. After that we met up with a friend of our Indian friend who took us to one of Delhi's many luxury malls. It was weird in the span of three hours to see such different sides of Delhi. While cruising in an air-conditioned car, Delhi really didn't seem so bad. Until you looked out the window and noticed the amount of people begging or the grit of the city. Even passing monuments like the Parlaiment, the streets would be in better repair, lined with trees and lovely, and then you would turn a corner and see a tent city. Poverty is something you get used to living here but then again, Hyderabad doesn't seem to have it to the same extent as Delhi. I'm ashamed to admit it but I've become accustomed to passively seeing things in India that would disturb me in the US, but at least for a while, Delhi jarred me out of this complacency and reminded me a bit of why I am here in the first place.

The rest of our time in Delhi passed almost pleasantly as we explored what monuments we could, including the beautiful but crowded India Gate dominating a grassy stretch of pedestiran walkway runnning to Parlaiment and best seen at sunset. We also spent several hours just relaxing in a grassy park, playing card games until a security guard told us no gambling was allowed in the park. We tried to explain that "Go Fish" isn't exactly a gambling game but decided it was best just to leave it anyway.

As we said goodbye to the city and headed to the airport, I was finally able to take a moment to reflect on the craziness of the last eight days. And I decided that I had probably just had one of the most intense yet fulfilling eight days of my life. I've traveled a fair share and seen some amazing things in the past but India is a different ballgame entirely. You learn to turn assumptions on their head here and you also learn quite quickly that this is a country that can balance extremes in a way no other place in the world can. And despite the headaches, frustration, and anxiety that may come along with the trip, you realize that these are also the things that make travel great. So while I am glad to be back in Hyderabad, I'm already looking forward to my next chance to explore this crazy, intricate country. Next up? Hopefully some elephant riding!