Resplendent Rajasthan

Day 297 - Tuesday 4 November 2008

Udaipur deservedly had half of a James Bond movie based around it for it's just that, a Hollywood (or should I say Bollywood), movie set in real life. It's a City and surroundings fit for the Maharana who still lives in it. If you want to see where I've been living for the last few days then just rent a copy of Octopussy and replace Roger Moore with me (not difficult surely!).
















But I expect you've been to Udaipur already - in your childhood dreams. And for those of you who have little girls - they'll probably be there tonight for it's the kind of location where princesses live ...


















It's got a Lake Palace of ornately carved white marble floating on a lake. And when I say floating I mean floating. It's not built on an island in a lake, it actually rises from the depths of Lake Pichola. And if that's not enough for you - there's two of them! Jagmandir Palace pre-dates the Lake Palace and has a herd of stone elephants waiting to greet you and dip their trunks in the lake for a drink. And if that's still not reason enough to head off to Udaipur the centre piece of the place is the City Palace that dominates the hill that rises from Lake Pichola and is a myriad of narrow corridors, low ceilings and brightly coloured glass rooms that look out over it's sister palaces down in the water. If you need more convincing the geography of the area is stunning with the rolling deserts of Rajasthan shimmering in the ochre shades of the most dramatic setting sun I've probably seen on my journey. And to top it all off you only have to look a few kilometres north to spot the imposing Monsoon Palace perched on the very edge of a cliff so steep it's a miracle Roger Moore made it past the first take when he got thrown down it's side. Rajasthan's resplendent ...















And Udaipur came along just at the right time for Jaipur found me snotty and in the wrong place. You may remember me talking in the last post about monkeys and the Discovery Channel. Well that's Jodhpur and a train journey to the north! A comedy slip up and a sign that the miles are adding up and maybe it's time to be making my way back to the UK! Consequently, I was fed up. I'd seen the Taj Mahal and that was my reason for being here!


Although Jaipur did provide another one of those crazy coincidences that seem so normal in my similarly crazy current life style and got things back on track. For in Cafe Coffee Day in Jaipur I bumped into a movie maker from Santa Monica in Los Angeles who's very good mates with a guy at Naughty Dog who my brother not only works with but helped to get installed as a Dog. Weirdly normal these days. Ben Rekhi's a top bloke and I'm very thankful to him for letting me tag along in his taxi to the incredible fortifications around Jaipur called Jaigarh and Nahargarh Forts. This is the view off the top of Jaigarh of the nestling Amber Fort. That's three in touching distance of each other. And I love the 'Great Wall' style of their fortifications trailing over the mountains ...











I wanted to get some Rajasthani Forts 'into focus' and the state certainly didn't disappoint. For Rajasthan's a weird one. While the rest of India was uniting (predominantly under the Mughal rulers from Persia) Rajasthan took some persuading. For centuries it resisted any attempts at invasion from foreigners and a vast area of wealthy, independent City States developed thanks to the best fighters on the Indian Sub-Continent who protected their ruling Kings - the Maharajas (or Maharanas depending on where you are in Rajasthan). Armed with the most elaborate and highest volume of weaponry I've seen anywhere in the world the Rajputs evoke a sense of grandeur and spectacle in my mind that makes me wonder why Hollywood haven't made an epic along the lines of a Gladiator about this bit of the planet. For half the difficulty of travelling here for me is that I've known so little about it. I have images burned in my mind of Petra in Jordan (IJ inspired!) but despite the British Raj's past control over this part of the world (which interestingly was, for years, not imposed by the British Government but the British owned East India Trading Company) it wasn't touched on in my History lessons. I should probably just do a History degree and get it all sorted!


I've also worked out that one of the reasons I’ve been feeling the pressures of living in the land of a billion people so much is that I’ve been travelling through India during Hindu’s biggest festival and busiest holiday period of their year – Diwali. For example I decided to take a stroll down the ‘chowks’ (Hindi for marketplace, street and intersection!) of Jaipur on Dhawenas. The day when Hindus will bring themselves good fortune for the coming year if they go and spend whatever money they have on, most notably, gold! I guess if you walked down Oxford Street in London on Christmas Eve it’d feel like there’s a billion people in England!

And Diwali is called the ‘Festival of Lights’ and I couldn’t agree more. The production and sale of fireworks is mega-business and on Diwali’s biggest night the skies are ablaze for every minute that it’s dark. Well, they stopped about 3am and started again about 7am. And I’m not talking a safe, government controlled firework display. It was way better than that. This all had a homemade, underground feel to it and the edginess made it! I was treated to a firework display from my rooftop restaurant of the exceptional Atithi Guest House in Jaipur the likes of which I doubt I’ll ever see again. We do them well in England. But not like this. The firecrackers do still make me jump even at the end of my time in India. No, it’s not a gun, no, it’s not a bomb, no it’s not two cars smashing into each other, it’s just Indian’s celebrating!


While Jaipur wasn't what I expected it was still a cool place to spend Diwali. There's loads of historical stuff to check out and like many of Rajasthan's City States it still has a hugely impressive City Palace and a living Maharaja. Not to mention the legacy of architecture that has you gasping regularly at another Muslim styled (the Mughal's influnce spread), often dome dominated building. And in Jaipur they're pink giving the place it's nickname 'The Pink City'. In 1853 the residing Maharaja decided to paint his impressive city in pink paint to welcome a visit from The Prince of Wales! It makes the city's centrepiece, the Hawa Mahal, look good in photos next to some of India's numerous textiles ...













I also got my Bollywood experience in Jaipur not New Delhi because it's home to one of India's most famous (and best quality) movie theatres - the Raj Mandir. What a great travel experience and a joy to see how restless, loose and free the audience act. The Raj Mandir holds about 500 people and I went for the Diamond Box for the best quality! The fact it's in Hindi is no barrier to following the plot as confirmed by the team of doctors I sat next to and discussed it with during the INTERMISSION! The movie was called Heroes and was a very patriotic re-make of The Motorcycle Diaries. Two film students travelling India handing over farewell letters to the families of soldiers who've died in the name of India. Although the subject matter was preceded by the students flouncing around the posh houses of New Delhi and getting in a couple of obligatory dance numbers. These are endemic in all Bollywood movies and feature a gang of attractive people dancing to a choreographed routine and smiling their heads off. In Bollywood they don't seem to segregate their movie making into drama, musical, etc. It's ALL heavily emotional, driven by song, characterised by massively popular stars, enjoyed with the world's best value popcorn and a world away from the street life I've seen so much of ...











But back to Udaipur where I also fell lucky and had one of those brilliant chance meetings with a fellow traveller called Lisa from Canada who's getting towards the end of her 12 month epic tour of every corner of India. Wow, I admire her patience! She really was a like mind and helped me get a much greater understanding of India. I quickly learned from Lisa that I've been taking on the country's notoriously frustrating places where the tourist factor (and complimentary culture shock) are at their highest. Exactly why she left it so late in her Indian adventure. A very smart woman with a great eye for a photograph and a very impressive blog.















Udaipur had me constantly thinking of places like Monaco (somewhere I need to tick off soon if anyone wants to join me). It's a combination of the incredible location, residing royalty and top end hotels. I loved it so much (I never thought I'd say that about a place in India a couple of weeks ago) that it's made my favourite places in the world list. For which I've now worked out my formula. It's never about a building (e.g. the Taj Mahal is ace but Agra is average) and it's always about a place. The place has historical architecture, a beautiful setting, great value accommodation in shady streets, ace bookshops about it's past, good food, it's not too big and it always feels, well, very comfortable. There you go. I've worked it out. Do you know your own formula?

The City Palace of Udaipur had a constant procession of people milling through it and it's a miracle that I got this shot of a fountain inside with no one in it (the shot not the fountain!). Just close you eyes and picture Maharanas and Maharanis (their Queens) relaxing on a hot and sunny afternoon while looking through that window at the Lake Palace just below. I could live like that!












The trip out to the Monsoon Palace was brilliant and popular. It felt like a dash up to join the masses (it was the last day of the Diwali holiday) and we had one hell of a characterful auto-rickshaw driver who weaved us back down the hairpin bends when the sun had set. The Monsoon Palace is actually dilapidated but it's not about the inside of the building. It's all about the view back to Udaipur and the previous generations of Maharanas who would escape here during the Summer's monsoon away from the heat down in the City Palace. Make this one big and you'll be able to pick out the sights I talked about earlier ...

And so my own version of India's Golden Triangle is complete and I sit here a lot happier than the last time I typed from New Delhi. (I flew Kingfisher Airlines back here yesterday afternoon. Yes, the same Kingfisher beer man. India's own Sir Richard Branson called Dr Vijay Mallya). For I'm about to leave and I'm thinking 'do I like India?'. Well, I love Udaipur, and the Taj Mahal is very impressive. I got what I wanted out of this country but I've found it horribly contradictory. This is the first time that I've been in a developing country (I think it's Second World) where there's a media (and movie industry) telling people in many, flashy coffee shops how India's 'incredible' and life's wonderfully glossy. When the truth is that for many it just isn't. I'm happy that they're dreaming big and to develop you have to portray better standards of living. But you also need to be grounded in reality. And I can't work out if they are. For as one cartoonist in the Times of India beautifully put it when he drew two old, homeless guys living on the street talking to each other 'I don't know what all this global economic crisis stuff is all about - we've never had any money'.

Here's my final India observations:
The press will run requests for information alongside a dead body and 'do you know who this is'
There are awesome camel carts in the streets
Toast comes sandwiched together
And is best tasted alongside decadently sweet chai
Cows, camels and donkeys used for transport get stylishly painted
There's forts, palaces, forts, palaces, forts, palaces, forts, palaces, etc ...
They've gorgeous completely orange wasps that look like they've been painted
Peacocks are the national bird and everywhere - just not real ones!
The guards at historical sites will blow their whistles at anything
There are 3,000,004 Hindu gods and goddesses
The street kids remind me of Fagin's gang and when they're not begging you for money I'm pleased to say they play very happily
This country pulls your feelings around like nowhere else on earth
The 25m long and 5 cm wide turbans are regal and elegant
India has the sunniest, warmest climate anywhere I've travelled in the world because I've not seen a cloud in 3 weeks and it feels perpetually like Summer
But it comes at a cost 'cos New Delhi's also got the smoggiest, dustiest air that I've ever breathed - I think second only to Cairo in the world - I'll tell you on Friday when I can compare!

So from India it's good bye. I think I'll be back and there's a lot more for me here. But when I'm a bit fresher and haven't got over 35,000 miles behind me. One thing's for sure. India will definitely make you contemplate ...