Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur: queens of the desert
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Jaisalmer,
India
Thursday, March 18, 2004
... in which the sweaty traveller begins to feel the heat, and visits the red, blue and white desert cities...
THE BIRDS
Getting up at dark, I walked along Bikaner's dusty streets to find a bus heading towards Jaisalmer, the famous desert town five hours drive south. Inspired by the wildlife I'd seen on the camel trek, I followed the suggestion of my guidebook, and hopped off the bus at a small railway town in the middle of nowhere in order to rent a bike and do a small excursion to the desert village of Keechen.
Approaching the village, after a hot 10km noontime bikeride through scrubland, there were beautiful sand dunes folding and receding all around, like huge waves. The main attraction of Keechen was perched on these dunes - at first I thought they were plants, until I saw them moving, and as I got closer, heard them screeching. In winter, Keechen is home to thousands of cranes; elegant silver-blue birds that swarm around the two lakes in town, waiting for the right moment to migrate to Siberia for a spot of fishing. The cranes were draped all over the dunes in long rows, and at the banks of the receding lake by the hundreds.
Back in the town, I headed towards the train station (this being the point where the railway line from Jodhpur meets the road from Bikaner) and tried unsuccesfully to get a ticket for any train heading to Jaisalmer that day. Not speaking English, not beleiving I was willing to board a slow service, and with no English signs at all, they sold me a ticket for the express service the next day, with which I boarded the wrong slow train heading out anyway - the conductor was most understanding.
It was the trainride from hell - taking 6 hours for 150km, with fine sand blowing through the open windows and doors all the time. I wrapped up dust-free in my new Jaipur blanket and sat on the doorstep watching the desert slowly trundle by.
The train passed through Pokhran; this where not too long ago, India tested its first nuclear bomb. This caused enormous euphoria at first - but after the international community stopped all aid programs to India, and after Pakistan soon tested their first bomb, the headache set in for India as it became clear that two more unstable nations were capable of slaughtering each other and endangering the rest of the world. Pokhran is a huge military base, with kilometres of fencing, guards and parked military hardware. It's only a short drive to (or from) the Pakistani border, after all.
JAISALMER
Imagine a rock in the middle of the desert with a red sandstone, inhabited fortress on top of it, and a small town of small bazaar streets at the foot of it. That's Jaisalmer. My hotel was in a beautiful old haveli (large town house, or palace), with great views from the rooftop. Next door was the large Jain temple, and just down the street was the small main square. The whole town is a light shade of pink, after the stone used for all houses, and it simmers away during the day when the temperature reaches 38 degrees in March, which is springtime here.
In retrospect, I shouldn't have taken that rooftop view room - the stone walls got so hot in the sun during the day that it nearly hurt to touch them at night. But even at midnight it was around 35 degrees both inside and outside the room, so it didn't matter that much. I tried sleeping under a humid sheet with the fan turned on, and that kept me cool enough.
You could say that the town is disneyfied - all shops in the fortress have people outside muttering 'e-mail?', 'postcards?' or most embarrassing, 'toilet paper?'. Every morning, when it's not too hot, groups of bused-in tourists who stay in the big hotels out of town hurry around the fortress, followed by a scrum of persistent salesmen and beggars, making you realise again how good it is to travel independently.
A strange feeling befell me in Jaisalmer, and it must have been the first town I have visited in years where I skipped seeing a few of the important sights - I never got round to seeing the Jain temple right next to the hotel, nor the lake with an old palace next to it. Maybe it's because of the job I have, where it's an automatism. Now, not going out to see the sights was pure luxury. I just wandered around, met up with Christina again for a day, and went to a very murky swimming pool with an Austrian traveller (hey, but at 38 degrees, I'd swim in mud).
JODHPUR
FIve hours to the southeast of Jaisalmer, at the edge of the Thar desert, lies Jodhpur, the 'blue city'. Although giving Indian cities a coloured nickname seems to be a tourist ploy to me, in this case it was true, many houses in the centre are painted a bright blue (the indigo in the paint reflects the heat and also keeps insects at bay). Seen from the huge fortress that towers over the centre of town, it's an amazing view of Picasso-like quality, with hundreds of blue flat-roofed houses crammed close together.
I decided on my newfound backpacker tactic of not booking anything ahead, and simply got a rickshaw to the centre, dumped my bag at an internet cafe, and walked around to see the options. Tourist season is over, so I was able to bargain the price of a cool room, for the sake of the Indian principle that you should never pay what they ask.
The fortress houses the Maharaja's palace, which is the best and most impressive I've seen in Rajastan. While not cheap at 250Rs (€5), you do get to see a very well-tended palace, a good museum, and get an English audio tour too.
The museum had a display of elephant seats (golden and silver seats with umbrellas), and seats in which royalty was carried around by servants. One of these was a closed version for the maharaja's wife, and the story goes that she visited London 100 years ago using it, where the local press had taken a picter of her getting out the carriage, which showed her ankle - a terrible disgrace for Indian terms. The Maharaja then bought up the whole edition of that newspaper to prevent the pictures from reaching India.
Most memorable about Jodhpur fortress, however, was the view of the town 200m below. Huge vultures and eagles were swooping around, using the rising wind currents to effortlessly circle the fortress. The high vantagepoint meant that they came very close, and whooshed by just metres from the fortress ramparts. Impressive. I must be getting old - I'm starting to notice birds, and have even bought an Indian Birds book to recognise them.
MOUNT ABU
Rajastan's only hill station, bordering Gujarat in the south, is Mount Abu. At 1200m, it's usually 10 degrees cooler than the plains below, and you immediately feel the difference as you get off the bus. It's not a place that attracts too many foreign tourists, but is a popular Indian honeymoon and family holiday destination, meaning the streets of the small town are full stands selling kitchen equipment, luxury clothes, and children's toys (incuding some great magic sets that remind me of the one I used to have as a child).
There were horserides, you could get a snapshot taken at the lake by one of the many photographers, or rent a camera from the many development shops to take your own pictures (here's a difference with China - local tourists all already have digital cameras over there).
The town is set in a very Asian-looking valley, with palm trees, green fields of wheat, and low hilltops all around. The town centres on a large lake (2m lower than normal due to drought) with the summer residences of various maharajas overlooking it.
Lalit, working for the Shri Ganesh hotel, does walks in the surrounding mountains every day, and I joined him for two; one day we walked up to a lake for a swim, the other day we walked to the crags, the place where the plateau suddenly drops 900m to the plains below - the views were amazing. Surprisingly, we didn't see much wildlife except for a snake in the lake (which rhymes) and a sort of weasel. The desert was a much better place to spot animals than up here in the mountains.
Nearby town are some of India's best temples - the Jain temples at Delwara. The two main temples are said to contain the best examples of marble carving in the world. And it did look stunning, with rows of elephants and dancing girls in spotless white marble everywhere you looked. The presence of Jain pelgrims and tourists is good news here - they are traditionally picky with food, meaning the restaurants are above-average good. I tried a Gujurat thali: for 40Rs, seven different waiters rush up to your table and deposit bowls of dal, vegetables, rice, popadums, chutney, bread, chapatis and more. And every few minutes they came back with pots of food for the free refills.
My last day in Abu turned out to be Hindu new year, and in the evening there was a crappy band playing on the lakeside while hundreds of people floated candles onto the lake - an amazing sight.
UDAIPUR
The bus from Mount Abu to Udaipur, a five-hour trip costing just over €1, was comfortable enough: no loud Hindipop was played and they didn't load too many people on the roof. I was seated next to a girl from Orissa, the state south of Kolkata/Calcutta, who got married three months ago. She'd been on a one-day honeymoon to Mount Abu with her husband, who was too busy at work in Delhi to take any more days off. Taking in account the 1,5 days it takes to get to Abu, they didn't have much time to relax.
In the white city of Udaipur, I was scooted off to the hotel by the rickshaw that was sent to meet me at the bus station; the next day however I decided to spend a bit more on sleep and moved to a nice hotel with - drumroll - a great swimming pool. Bliss. Plenty of tourists head here, and as a resuklt there were plenty of hawkers, and also fake art school students who would just love to bring you to their 'school' (read: shop) where they'd deploy cunning sales techniques to get you to buy the pretty miniature paintings they do so well.
If you've seen the Bond film Octopussy, then you know what Udaipur is like, because the film is set in these old streets and in the beautiful palace that's situated on an island in the middle of a lake. There was another fesitval here, involving the women of the different castes to take the statues of their deities from their temples to the lakeside for some rituals and dancing. It was amazing to see them all dressed up in their best saris. The city authorities had put on a nice show on boats on the lake (I recognised some of the dancers and artists from the Jaipur festival) for the hundred or so tourists in town, and some fireworks too. Nice place.
With some French and American travellers I met by the pool, I rented an Ambassador taxi (looking like something that would drive around England in 1950; think Mini Morris) for a daytrip in the countryside north of Udaipur. The ride was beautiful - green irrigated fields surrounded by bleak hills. The locals still used a chain of buckets driven by oxen to haul water up from deep wells. We visited the immense Kumbhalghar fortress, with walls draped around the hills like the Chinese wall. At Ranakpur we visited the other famous Jain temple, even more impressive than the one at Mount Abu - 1400 carved marble pillars held up the roofs of this magnificent building. On the way back to Udaipur, we stumbled across a village that was just in the middle of it's yearly 'mela', or festival. Dozens of crammed buses were arriving, and in the streets thousands of villagers dressed in their best saris were wandering around, examining the wares that traders had laid out on stalls. Just like I imagine we'd have in Europe in medieval times, there were dentists and magicians present too. Wonderful.
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Next up: Tigers, birds and fortresses on the way to Agra.
Weather: 40°+ heatwave in the valley, 10° cooler up on Mount Abu
Stomach status: surviving the heat well.
