Jaiselmer fort slideshow

Thursday 23rd July - We were in Jaiselmer for 3 days. The westernmost city in our Rajastan tour & only about 100km from the Pakistan border. Here's a slideshow of a morning wander around the fort that towers over the town. Wandering through the lanes we came across a just-born calf.

Press play icon to start slideshow, if you hover over the bottom part of the photo you should see play, pause, back & forward buttons. If you click on the photo you'll open a new window where you can watch the slideshow full screen in Picasa, which is where I uploaded them. Enjoy

A Pint from the Past – Porthdinllaen 28 years on

For a few years in the late 70s early 80s we had a hill farm called Caer Ferch Uchaf on the Llêyn peninsula in North Wales. I was at Uni in Salford, Greater Manchester, then frightful now redeveloped as Lancashire’s Silicon Canal. For my 20th or 21st birthday I invited all my Uni mates over to camp at the farm & have a party in the farmyard. Most of my friends from high school – Ysgol (school) Glan-y-Môr (by the beach) Pwllheli came up the hill from town to join us. I guided the (mostly) student bikers to the venue with a kite on 400ft of string.
It was a great night until the strength of the home brew worked its magic on the cultural differences between the two tribes & a fight broke out. All very silly & no bones broken, a fine time was had by all. Many slept in the cow shed, some couldn’t find their tents & slept around their bikes.
The following day we all went down to the legendary Ty Côch (Red House) Inn on the at Porthdinllaen.

The pub is right on the beach in a hamlet of 5 houses & a lifeboat station only accessible by walking along the beach or across the clifftop. My guests ate & drank their fill & then rode (carefully) back to Manchester.
I’ve not been back to Ty Coch for about 25years & as the weather was good on the one day we’d set aside for me to show C North Wales we ended up walking to Porthdinllaen.
It was just past the point of the day when I can usually persuade C to let me have a pint (about 12:15pm, depending if I’ve been good).
The place hadn’t changed a bit, other than the weather being perfect, & we sat on the wall outside the pub & lapped it all up. Across the bay, looking north up the coast two mountains called The Rivals peered down at the village of Trefôr. Miserable spot that is, in shadow most the day even when the rain stops, Trefôr recently cheered itself up by unleasing Welsh soul diva Duffy onto an unsuspecting world, she’d not have been born till a couple of years after the last time I was here. Ho hum.
One of the best lunchtime pints of my life. Just perfect.

Night in the dunes #2 - Txting & Camel farts

We returned from our afternoon on camel-back sore but happy. The dinner in the little mud-hut compound was very good, one of the 3 curries was made of the Rajastani desert beans which became a favorite. A local band sat cross-legged on a sheet in the dirt & played fairly genuine local folk music. C & I really got into it though a French family with 4 teenage daughters was harder to convince. The maman looked as though she was terrified of the tabla player & what he might do to the girls with his exotic rhythms. We danced & hammed it up under the revealing starlight as the clouds cleared & the turban was passed around. The tabla call & response sequence with the clapstick players was mesmerizing.

I say 'fairly genuine folk' because after the dancers left Ramesh pulled the class thing on us. Our Delhi friend Emily had explained on our 1^st night that in India that not only do we visitors get lost in the caste system (3 main castes & 3000+ sub castes) but overlaid on that is a good old fashioned class system just as unfair as in the good 'ole UK. As part of "it's India, you'll never know what the f**k is going on" (a continuing series in 708 parts) Ramesh condemned the players we'd enjoyed so much as not from the right caste, playing home-made instruments, wearing the wrong clothes & generally being not up to much. We refused to let these details distract from the lingering sense of fun & prepared to leave again for a night in the dunes.

Ramesh lent me his 'cow-stick' (a 4ft rigid bamboo pole he uses to clear 'obstacles') & we packed head torches & warmer clothes & mounted up again outside the compound. The route to the dunes was the same as earlier but this time we were in complete darkness. As our eyes adjusted to the starlight we could just make out each other, our camels & the medieval camel cart with it huge wooden wheels trundling along ahead of us. This carried the French couple while their daughters rode like us. My colloquial French came flooding back as the cart camel unleashed an enormous fart right at their heads & they swore & cussed as the rest of us laughed.

The only sound other than our voices was the rhythmic tinkle of camel bells & the faint thud of hoofs on the sand, completely hypnotic. Riding my evening camel was more of a trial though, having no string stirrups to rest my feet in meant added terrible thigh strain to the list of ailments posted before as I struggled to stay on & avoid a plunge into the darkened thorn bushes.

The camels spread out on top of the dunes & we had our own crest on which to sleep. The young cameleers laid out a rug, sheet pillows & a thick quilt (jeez, we do it tough) for us before retreating 20m or so to settle in next to their charges. We settled in & counted shooting stars while the lads chatted & the camels burped & farted. Some disturbance later as a pair of hoons from the village scrambled up the dunes on a motorbike, narrowly missing camels, sleeping Francaises & falling off a 10m sand cliff. They were soon dispatched.

In space no one can hear you scream, in the dunes no one can avoid your text messages…Little Nokia bing-bongs & chirrups floated around for a few hours to my amusement & apparently I contributed as I found 2 txts on my phone in the morning, one from UK one from Australia.

It was a delicious night & waking from time to time was a real pleasure as the starscape tracked across the sky. Dawn was magical, soft light, soft sounds of Hindi chatting, yawns, stretches & hoiks. Bliss

And yes, camels do chew the cud all night.

Driving Rules- FAQ

Do I need a driving licence?

Yes, you must always have a driving licence with you when you drive. These are available after an intensive driving course & a test, or by popping round the back of the market to the third door on the left, ask for Vikram.

Is there a limit to number of people I can carry in my car, on my bike, autorickshaw, tractor etc?

No, the maximum number of people you can carry is up to you, your gods, & Newton's laws. Alternatively if you run out of fingers & toes that's probably enough passengers.

There is a truck going 2kph less than me 2 meters ahead & 2 trucks & a tractor abreast in the oncoming lane. Is it correct to overtake?

Absolutely, all traffic in India is surrounded by a force field about 2cm thick over which is a thin layer of an invisible Teflon-like substance. Overtake, go for your life! Enjoy!

I am driving along a 4 lane highway with a pleasant grassy central reservation. There are vehicles travelling at high speed in both directions in all four lanes. Should I be worried?

Absolutely not, see above.

I approach busy a roundabout. There is a cow standing on the podium where the policeman should be. What should I do?

1. Drive resolutely towards cow veering to left or right of the obstacle according to your mood.
   
2. Slither
   

I had a dream the other night, I was looking at a copy of the Indian Highway Code. Inside the beautifully embossed cover was one sheet of paper & on it was written "This Page Intentionally Left Blank"

Agra – it’s Awful!

Driving into Agra after a day in the Ambassador our hearts sank. We knew it would be a grubby industrial city but not as filthy as this. The pollution rivals Bangkok in the old days. First memorable sight was a 3-wheel delivery van sporting a huge "Sunlight Pure" margarine logo on the back mostly obscured by the enormous plume of black smoke it was pumping out.

We stopped a couple of times searching for the cheap leather hold all I should have bought in Jaiselmer, no luck, & almost gagged on the humidity. It'd rained earlier which left pools of diesel/water/cowdung soup everywhere & an atmosphere you could cut with a chapatti.

The Hotel Royal Regency is the sort of business place we expected, functional & used to tourists who only stay the night, see the Taj, breakfast & then split. On a major road in the middle of nowhere there are a couple of other hotels & 2 of the saddest malls you've ever seen given they're only a few years old. In between all this are patches of wasteland & slums.

Ramesh had warned us not to go out, eat in the hotel restaurant, don't use credit card anywhere, etc etc as "Uttar Pradesh is mostly full of criminals, & not clean". This seems a little hard on 166 million people so while C had a nap I decided to go for a march, get some exercise & see what happens.

Walked a mile down the 4 lane road via the 2 malls to find the nearest beer shop & walked back. Didn't die. Saw the following;

• The Taj from the top floor of mall #1 glistening in the polluted twilight. Jaw-dropping even from here, hyperbole warning for tomorrow.
  
• 2 well dressed 40 something ladies being shown how to use an escalator by their children in mall #2. We matched grins as they stepped onboard.
  
• My first albino horse, complete with pink eyes & lips
  
• A fight outside the street corner police lockup, someone's been up to no good
  
• More guns than I've seen in years, all the security guards at the malls have shotties as do several youths hanging out in the carparks
  
• A donkey foal stuck on one side of the central barrier while it's mother was on the far side munching on a garbage pile. The barrier is 4ft high & 2ft wide & the foal was obviously distressed & unable to jump over. I could see they'd been separated at a junction a couple of hundred meters up the road & I was worried it'd get run over. I watched for a while as the locals watched me & as always the traffic surprised. Huge tourist buses, trucks, autorickshaws & speeding motorbikes all somehow flowed around the distressed animal. Aaaahhhh
  

 

Birdwatching in Bundi

3rd August - Here’s a surreal & rather magical experience. We’re 30ft up a dead tree at sunset birdwatching outside Bundi.
It’s a little cruisier than that actually, we’re on a shaded platform, in comfy cane chairs, cold beer in one hand, binocs / telephoto in the other.
We’re the sole guests at a tented resort 10kms outside the town, which means there are at about 5 times as many staff as punters.

Clouds of dragonflies waft about us, there’s a parrot chirruping on a branch about 6ft away & before us is a lake about 2km long almost entirely covered in lotus leaves. There are a couple of ancient burial shrines on tiny man made islands in the lake & all around us are paddy fields being slowly filled by an ancient pump. A parrot just landed almost on top of a startled squirrel & monkeys are being shooed away from the restaurant.
A tiny falcon just darted through in front of us & disturbed a tree full of pigeons & sent a posse of parrots off at the double.
We’re sort of ‘behind’ the bowl of hills that cradles Bundi’s old town & the ramparts of the abandoned fort are peer over the ridge at us along the lake. There’s a rather large telecom tower up there also which I s’pose I should mention…
C snaps away with the Olympus, 1001 ways with a parrot on a stick. I borrow the camera & take the same shots all over again. Some drop-dead gorgeous shots emerge after much culling.
Being the only guests means there are several people dedicated to anticipating our every thought, often before we’d had them. When we climbed up to the treehouse this afternoon I’d only just decided to go look for a 2nd chair when I saw one, & a table being rushed along the path from reception. This evening C wandered up & within seconds there were chaps fluffing the cushions, putting linen head rests on & smoothing a table cloth down for us to rest our camera on. Frankly disconcerting but it’s bad form to complain don’t you know…

Udaipur day 1 pt2 – Life’s a Pineapple

Carol lay in bed nursing her headache. I decide to wander around, be nice to everybody, & see what happens. One aim was to pick up an Ethernet cable so I could plug in my lappie at the hotel as there's no wifi. After 20mins of having to say "Namaste!, Australian!, Sydney!, Cricket!, Ricky Ponting!, Adam Gilchrist!, 1^st time India!, 49!, married!, no children!" to everybody my niceness policy was backfiring badly. C reckons we should get T shirts made up with all those responses printed front & back so we can just point at our chests when asked…

I retreated to an apparently deserted bookshop/net café. A 50 something American woman was out back on a PC & said she'd been here alone for half an hour or so. "Help yourself honey! Eat all the chocolate & take all the books you want". I decided against & checked the street outside. A strikingly handsome Indian chap sauntered over, might have been his shop or he might have been minding the whole row of shops, that was never established. No cables here but he immediately offered to run me over to where he bought his computers on his motorbike.

Dev had perfect Uni-educated English & as we careered through the traffic we chatted about the MBA he wants to do & the current spate of bashings of Indian students in Australian cities. He'd wanted to go to Adelaide or Sydney but his father has now forbidden this & he's probably off to the US instead. Not for the first time I apologised on behalf of a nation.

I got a cable made up & as we journeyed back to his area he started the familiar spiel about how he works with a painting cooperative where all the profits get divided between the artists & the shopowner. Would I like to visit the 'school' & learn about the painting & maybe have a look in the shop, no expectation to buy. I did all the above & got away without a purchase. Beautiful though the work was I didn't want or need it & used getting back to my sick wife as an excuse to extricate myself.

I mention all this because it sounds initially very much like our Delhi kidnapping but the difference here was that I genuinely like this guy & I was engaged in an exchange. He'll get me the cable I need & I'll look at his paintings, I'll act my role of innocent abroad & he'll be pleasant to be with, maybe he'll sell something. A subtle dance.

I was reminded of my friend Kenny O'Clair from some Boeing town in the US. I met Kenny in Burundi in 1988 & he was on a woefully under researched wander around Africa. He had long blond hair, big teeth, no chin & bottle bottom glasses with a rose tint (I kid you not); he was straight from Scooby Doo central casting. He'd get in to awful scrapes in the weirdest of places & always get away with it because he genuinely didn't know what was going on. He just kept on smiling & shaking hands. One night over dinner he came out with "Hey! Everything's better than everything else!" which pretty much summed up his approach.

His other phrase was "life's a pineapple", but he never explained what that meant.

How to Comment

Hi, a few people have been unable to comment. I'm still learning this stuff too but I found a setting that said you could only comment if you had a Google Account or similar. I have removed this so now if you comment yo can select 'anonymous' or 'name' from the drop list "Comment As" below where you type your glowing praise. Have a go why don't you.
Also changed the blog layout abit but can't get the title to show up well. stay tuned
love G&C

Udaipur day 2 – a Salwar Kameez & banana skin

30^th July – This afternoon Carol didn't bang her head so we went out to try some shopping, potential for disaster very high.

We walked away from the backpacker area down towards the clocktower where the sari shops & silversmiths start. We'd bought some bananas for lunch & munched away as we walked. Carol popped into a silversmiths to asked about some silver bottles inlaid with blue & green stones & tiles. I was left holding the skins & met a calf wandering down the street who seemed interested. 3 banana skins later she was my new best friend & when I retreated into the silver shop she was keen to follow. Silver shop customers here are all sit on the floor at low glass cabinets, customers remove shoes & are invited to rest on white mattresses to discuss weights & prices. The front half of a besotted calf mad for fruit was less welcome & there was a minor scene as the shopkeeper shouted at me shouting at (cute) beast.

After hours of fruitless searching & the occasional lark with the ladies we ended up buying a made to measure salwah kameez for C in a shade of mid-olive with deep-turquoise embroidered flowers with tiny mirrors in the middle. The pants are the opposite (for the guys = deep-turquoise with mid-olive embroidered flowers with tiny mirrors in the middle) the chiffon scarf that goes with it is a riot of all the above, but see-through. Carol says it's dark olive green & a deep teal blue but what does she know.. WE had at least 7 guys 'helping' the purchase along plus the tailor from a few doors down who clearly thought he'd licked out having to take C's measurements.

We pick it up tomorrow, wonder if she'll let me post a photo..

After all that we wandered home & as C went up for a shower I walked off to the beer wallah about 500m along the lake shore. All bottle shops I've seen, in Rajastan at least, are called "English Beer & Wine Shops" (que?) & have an enormous "8pm" painted on their shutters which I guess is self-explanatory. Jaki in Jaisalmer had already proved this was only the closing time for those not in the know but a clear curfew for tourists. Most look like prison cells & money & liquor are exchanged through a gap in the bars that would do Spokane jail proud. Staff must be grumpy to get the job.

Walking back from beer wallah with my bottle of Bullet (not less than 8%) beer, along the lake side of the wall rather than the road side, saw a circle of elderly men in western clothes sitting on the dry bed of this narrow arm of the lake listening intently to what looked like a sadhu on sabbatical. He had the long hair & air of other worldliness of a holy man but was wearing the standard slacks & shirt of his friends, odd.

Mystery possibly solved as 50m further on a café on the opposite bank wafted some Bob Marley at me (at last! Where 2 or 3 backpackers are gathered together there will be the Bob). Maybe the sadhu was a café owner & his smoke was not bindi.

Udaipur day 1 – Elephants & Octopussy

29^th July - Lovely mountain drive from Ranakpur 2hrs to Udaipur, the "Venice of India". The room is stunning we look straight out across one arm of the lake. At some altitude we are in much cooler country with hills all round the city & a chance of a second aircon-free night (it's hell on my skin daahling). There are eagles & kites soaring above & heron & cormorants flying past our room, 200m away across the water an elephant saddles up for an afternoon stroll.

We've windows along 2 sides of the room & these fold open to allow us to feel the breeze & hear the sounds wafting from all around. There are 2 ghats down below through the trees where women & men come to bathe & launder, separately, in the early ,morning.

Feroz has done us proud booking this, there's a view of the main lake as well as the Lake Palace hotel. The latter is famed not only for a)taking up a complete island b)costing upwards of US$500 a night in high season but c)for hosting Roger Moore & babes for several eyebrow-arching scenes in Octopussy. Quite beautiful, can't wait to explore & will try & avoid the many cheap cafes that still show the Cubby Broccoli masterpiece every night.

Carol banged her head on the ornate (spiked, basically) archway from the room up onto the marble floored daybed area & had to lie down for a couple of hours. After fetching Aspirin from the local medicine wallah I set out to smile my way solo around town..

“I’m on the Camel!” - night in the dunes #1

We left Jaiselmer & all our new friends on 25^th July & drove an hour out to Khuri

Khuri is a dusty village of about 500 noble Rajput families & the same again of Pakistani Muslim refugees from the '71 war. The latter live in cowdung adobe huts – kitchen hut, courtyard, sleeping hut – while the Rajputs have stone & brick 2 room houses. There's a school for the locals but the refugee kids attend a hut school set up by a local charity.


We were there, as all tourists are, to have a short camel ride in the spectacular sand dunes 1km outside town. The whole area is in the National Desert Park aka the Great Thar Desert but is mostly arid saltbush scrub populated by camels, dogs, goats & peacocks. The sahara-like dunes only occur in a couple of accessible areas, here & at Sam the other side of Jaisalmer. Cashed up whiteys can do anything from a 12day Jodhpur - Jaisalmer trek to a simple joyride of a couple of hours. As I managed an Olympic botty rash record after only an hour on board I'm clear we made the appropriate choice.

Riding a camel as it lopes along & the cameleer whispers encouragement from the back seat is a dreamy experience, when he speeds it up to a canter it's a bone jarring, spine compressing advert for chiropractry. Not to mention the, ahem, testicular trauma & risk of disembowelment from the wooden pommel. It was wonderful, the dunes are dramatic & from 20m up above the surrounds the view of the flat plains & huge sky is inspiring. There were a few other people about & a couple of lads trying to get us to buy warm v expensive beer but nothing could ruin the atmosphere.

Hijacked in Connaught Place – riding with Ramesh #1

Blimey, we have a car & driver for our 21 day tour of Rajastan. Not exactly roughing it & nothing like any traveling we've done before. A bit like the way we bought a house (went out for a quiche & bought a 3 bedroom bungalow) we went into a travel agent to get a free map of Delhi & came out with a full itinerary, hotels, driver & a lovely old Ambassador car. Long story, here's the dot points:

• 1^st day Delhi went to city centre Connaught Place well aware that numerous touts pick up tourists on behalf of dodgy travel agents
  
• Were picked up by a tout for a dodgy travel agent. Well he was very smooth, middle aged &, wow, when I told him we were from Australia he was, like, a sports journalist & wanted to help us AND talk about cricket, amazing!
  
• He put us in an autorickshaw which was only the Indian price of Rp10 because he liked us & we were kidnapped to a travel agent with "Indian Govt" on the window.
  
• Asked for a map of Delhi
  
• Had cold water, had chai, spent 2hrs listening to Mr Ashok explain all about Rajastan & how we could do it all with him at an amazing price.
  
• Ashok gave us a car & driver for 24hrs to see Delhi before we left town, no agreement to buy anything as yet but Rp1000 deposit left
  
• Saw Delhi, worried about all the above. Quite liked Mr Singh our driver but car was small Tata about 'new Mini' size & Rajastan is very big.
  
• Met our good friend Emily for dinner & worried about all the above
  
• Went to actual Indian Govt Tourist Office, got free map, & v strong recommendation to return to Mr Ashok & get deposit back.
  
• With some trepidation we asked if our friend Brad's Delhi agent was approved. Much relief to find he was & nipped around corner to see Feroz Baktoo at Indian Travel Consultant (App. By Ministry of Govt. India).
  
• Hurrah! Both Brad Young of Katoomba & India Govt recommend this guy.
  
• Booked a huge tour of Rajastan with Feroz, retrieved Mr Ashok's deposit (he dropped price by 15% but we stood firm, which surprised him & us)
  
• Met Ramesh our new driver who took us all over town to meet Emily for drinks & dinner, worried we 'd somehow reorganized our entire Indian experience over a map….
  
  

Having a car & driver in India has much to recommend it & we're really enjoying the gilded-cage freedom it gives us. In a way it is the gentle intro to travelling here that we'd promised ourselves. We had always said we'd take our time to get the hang of things, maybe stay in a quiet town before setting out on a grand tour. Having now seen Delhi & having heard how hard train tickets can be to get (many Indians travel in July for holidays & pilgrimages) this has proved to be even better. We have an itinerary through 10 towns* & back to Delhi with air-con/ensuite hotel rooms pre-booked. Can reject rooms/hotels we don't like (have), can alter the number of days at each place(have) & decide where we want to go each day. Africa on a Shoestring (my 1987 epic) it ain't. Despite not meeting people on the way we get much more time at each destination to get out & about, alone or with Ramesh.

Tool a while to get the hang of all the "sirs" & "ma'ams" & waving at the hoi polloi from the back of what looks like a 1960s Morris but, hey, we're adaptable.

Mandawa     3 nights
Bikaner        1
Jaisalmer    3
Jodhpur    2
Ranakpur    1
Udaipur    3
Bundi        4
Pushkar        2
Jaipur        3
Agra        1

If you want an idea of price, names of agents etc contact us.

How to start , what a dumb title & other guff

Hi, thankyou so much for passing by, I'm really glad to have finally get this going.

It's now about 7 weeks into our trip & I've finally had time to start to write. I've written a couple of things today at the hotel & posted them here at the internet café near the clocktower in Jodhpur central market. I've a bellyful of Makhatani Special Lassi & a head full of ideas but lilited time as we've a rooftop bar to visit around sunset.

We both hope you enjoy what follows, we don't intend to run a chronological diary or the trip as we've already done so much but will post bits & pieces as we write. There's a rough Rajastani schedule in one post & I'll try & include days where I can.

We'll write about the UK as & when & intersperse those posts whenever, like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.

Photos & maybe video will be slotted in when I work out how to do that.

Feel free to comment, it'd be great to see what you think

Love, Guy & Carol & Rajastan

Oh yeah, the title, couldn't think of anything better for a UK/India trip so there…. Also despite living dangerously on dodgy real ale & Indian street food I'm getting bigger not smaller…& there was me hoping to catch a dose of something explosive & lose a ¼ of my body weight like people used to in the good old days…Larry you were right!