India!

@trev33 said
Will you go to Jaisalmer as well? Overnight camel safari there was one of my highlights in India. Jaipur is nice to, maybe you can do a similar thing from there im not sure.

@indonesia-phil said
We go to Jaipur next week, so I'll look out for the camels....Mind you, the last time I rode a camel was approaching the great Pyramids in Egypt, and mine wanted to be the lead camel, so it walked at great speed and with no encouragement from me to the front of the camel train. I do not regard camel control as one of my acquired life - skills, nor was it one of my most comfortable life experiences. Meanwhile we are in....I'll do the next post later.

@lemondrop said
have you met a mahout?

Day 10. (More or less). So, after a short internal flight we arrived in the early hours of yesterday morning in Goa. The drive to the airport was through mile after mile of suburban poverty, which we were expecting, and I'm sure we've not seen the worst of it, but it was a bit depressing nonetheless. Anyway this hotel by contrast is luxuriant, and we have an apartment with kitchen, lounge, bedroom and a terrace which is big enough to have a kick - about on. This is not a 'retreat' hotel, so we enter the mainstream of Goan tourism, in which we will immerse ourselves for the next week. We are in south Goa, which is apparently the 'refined' end, and we believe that there are good beaches here, although we haven't seen them yet; we are neither of us beach people, and the beloved one has in any case a bit of tummy - trouble at the moment so we stay for now within the hotel compound, which offers everything one needs, if not everything that one wants. I'm having another go at the 'inner calm' thing, which should get me through the week, and further massages are planned....No tigers here, these and more cultural pursuits happen next week, meanwhile it's fish and chips in the 'English pub' which is a part of the hotel, and actually looks more like an English pub than most English pubs, so it's ex - home from home, one might say. The Indian people have been always and everywhere charming and welcoming, but one's soul has yet to be stirred by this phase of the holiday; I'll let you know how the soul - stirring goes in a due course.

Day 15 (ish). So, we have beached the beaches of southern Goa, well one of them anyway, and it was a good beach, as beaches go, and wasn't as 'commercialized' as we had expected. Plenty of BFF's here (big fat foreigners), mostly Brits and Russians. We have also visited two not very impressive Hindu temples, and a much more impressive (architecturally at least) Catholic church, which was built at the turn of the 16th century, and contains the naturally preserved remains of St Francis of somewhere or another (not Assisi), who was one of the first Portugese missionaries to land here. In fact he died somewhere else, on a small heathen island somewhere, and there he was buried, but the Christians didn't want him buried amongst the heathens, so they dug him up and lo, they found that he was as fresh as the day that he had died, if that makes any sense, and this they deemed to be a miracle, so they made him a saint and brought him to Goa, where he now lays in a glass case for all to see. All except his right arm, that is, which was ceremoniously removed and taken to the Vatican city, the Vatican apparently wanting its' pound of flesh, so to speak, especially of a real - life dead saint. Praise the lord and cut his arm off, the whole thing being rather weird and macabre if you ask me, but there it is, and there he is, or most of him anyway, and what's left of him isn't looking so fresh anymore, so maybe the miracle's wearing off a bit.
Anyway the partial remains of a dead saint aside, it's hard to get a grip on the spirit of this part of India, which is about 40% Catholic, 40% Hindu, and the rest are everyone else, mostly Muslim, but aside from the buildings there isn't much evidence or sense of spirituality at all. The only other Hindu society which we know well is Bali, where the manifestation of their beliefs are everywhere expressed in small, beautiful and aromatic offerings, and a tangible sense of their peaceful religion, but here there's nothing, really, the temples and so on being an excuse to sell cheap tack to tourists and visitors, which is a shame, but there it is.
Anyway two more days in this superb hotel, with its' superb entirely Indian staff, the clientele of which are mostly rich Indians with a few BFF's thrown in, and which nestles amongst the decaying, ex - colonial grandeur of this part of India, and we head north to Jaipur, where the tigers await us, maybe, and where perhaps the soul of India resides, we will see, and if anyone's interested I'll let you know.

@sonhouse said
@Indonesia-Phil

My daughter studied Indian vocal music for three months in Mumbai. She had the time of her life. Have fun!
I lived three years in Thailand and that was a great time for me. Met elephants up close and personal, saw a cremation ceremony not to be missed, was invited to be in a giant candle parade with very beautiful Thai ladies. Great time for sure.

Day 18. So, having experienced the peace and tranquility of Kerala, and the beaches of southern Goa, or one of them anyway, yesterday evening we arrived in the noise and chaos of Jaipur, a city of about 3.5 million souls, a large majority of them Hindus. Our hotel here has 20 rooms, and is about 250 years old, a converted ex royal residence from the time of the Raj, with all of the aged and historical charm and style which one would expect from such a place. We have yet to sally forth very far into the 'Pink City', but judging from our after - dark arrival at the hotel, which is located in the heart of the old city, I suspect that here is the India which we have been looking for. Tomorrow we leave for a two - day excursion in search of Tigers in the Ranthambore National Park, before returning here to immerse ourselves in this historical place for the rest of the week, so I'll have more to say in a few days' time.

@indonesia-phil said
Day 18. So, having experienced the peace and tranquility of Kerala, and the beaches of southern Goa, or one of them anyway, yesterday evening we arrived in the noise and chaos of Jaipur, a city of about 3.5 million souls, a large majority of them Hindus. Our hotel here has 20 rooms, and is about 250 years old, a converted ex royal residence from the time of the Raj, wi ...[text shortened]... ves in this historical place for the rest of the week, so I'll have more to say in a few days' time.

@hand-of-hecate said
@sonhouse said
@Indonesia-Phil

“I lived three years in Thailand and that was a great time for me. Met elephants up close and personal, saw a cremation ceremony not to be missed, was invited to be in a giant candle parade with very beautiful Thai lady boys. Great time for sure.”

Fixed it.

Day 20. (Approximately)
Q. What can about 22,000 Iranians do in in about 12 years?
A. Build the Taj Mahal.
Okay, they weren't all Iranians, there were Indian workers there too, but most of them were Iranian, and it took another 10 years or so to complete the complex, which was started in 1632, but anyway, the Taj Mahal, for those who don't know and are interested, is a mausoleum built by Emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to her (and his)14th child. (Who put the 'mum' in Mumtaz?) All but 5 of the children died at birth, so they were tough times, but she got a mausoleum out of it, and it is a truly magnificent building. I mean it's not so much the size of the place, although that is impressive enough, but the devil's in the detail, and in all the fantastically detailed and intricate marble inlays, depicting abstract floral designs and verses from the Koran. Those Persians knew how to work their marble...The building is in white marble, and the emperor wanted to build an exact copy in black marble across the river for himself, and even had the foundations laid. His son, however, forbade the building of the second Taj for financial reasons, (apparently it didn't fall within the family budget) and had his father locked up under house arrest in a nearby palace to thwart his ambition. The old boy could see the first Taj from his bedroom window, or rather he couldn't, as by now his sight was fading, so he had to look at his creation through a diamond to provide the required magnification. Anyway, that's about all I can remember from our two - hour guided tour, and it's one place that we reckon is well worth a visit, it being justifiably ranked number one in the present day 7 wonders of the world. What a pity, though, that the second one was never completed.
Back later...

Still roughly day 20. Just before I finish rabbiting on about the Taj Mahal, it is a noteworthy thing that although there is a mosque within the complex, the building is not a religious building, but was built out of love of one man for one woman; guy was clearly infatuated, as us guys can get sometimes.
Anyway this was part of a three - day road trip across the wheat belts of northern India, which involved some hard miles along the highways of the sub - continent, where they could be said to be worthy of the name. Some of it was dual - carriageway, and it was not unusual to come across huge goods - lorries coming at you in the fast lane going in the wrong direction, or sometimes (sacred) cows might decide to have a snooze in the middle of the road, which makes for interesting driving. Overtaking camels hauling carts was also something, we didn't expect to see so many camels in India, an echo no doubt of the old silk trade. 'Hygiene breaks' were usually taken by a tree, although we did find the occasional oasis along the way with decent toilets, such establishments also selling decent coffee, and digestive biscuits. This was a stroke of genius by the owners of said establishments; selling digestive biscuits and other western delicacies not available anywhere else, to which the white people flocked like bees 'round a honey - pot, and for which extortionate prices were asked, but what price digestive biscuits under such circumstances? We bought some, anyway, as did others that we saw, and so three days on the road were largely fueled by digestive biscuits, ritz crackers and such, oh the joys of exotic foreign travel....
To be continued....

Still day 20. Okay, tigers....Two 3 - hour game drives through wild India, and we didn't see any. The nearest we got was hearing one roar, from probably about 20 metres away, but the scrub was too dense for us to catch sight of him or her. Others in different parts of the National Park were more fortunate, and one party saw five in one day, but that's safaris for you, and this part of the game plan of our visiting India didn't work out. Still, it was worth it for the other wild stuff that we did see, deer, monkeys (although we have plenty of those around the hotel, and one evening a quite large monkey approached our outdoor dining table, bold as you like, and stole off with the beloved ones' milkshake), and an extraordinary number of Peacocks and pea - hens. I mean there are literally hundreds of peacocks in the forests, and parrots, eagles and so on, so birds we did, tigers we did not.
Other highlights of the trip included the fort at Agra, a town which is also famous for its' gems and settings, and for its' marble - inlay work, and we bought a 'star of India' ring for the most beloved, as well as a small marble box with an elephant design on the top. Oh yes, and I almost forgot the 'step - well', an extraordinary stepped construction leading down to the water, consisting of hundreds of flights of steps, which has to be seen, really.
So anyway, here we are back at base - camp, in our superb, traditional hotel, where we take a rest for a couple of days, venturing no further than the city of Jaipur, which is where we are, and which we haven't really seen yet.
Our room is huge, as is the bed; I'm about 6 feet tall, and with my feet at one side of the bed I can only just reach the other side with outstretched arms. We have to sort of look for each other in the night....

@Indonesia-Phil
Thank you for this interesting story, I look forward to learning more.

Day 22. Sometime yesterday we left India, and flew overnight to Bali, which is home from home, and where we will stay for a week before returning to our real home in Sulawesi, which is a couple of hours' flight from here.
So the Indian adventure is over, and its' getting hot, dry and dusty over there; on our last day, during which we visited another couple of magnificent palaces in Jaipur, the temperature touched forty degrees C, and it'll get up to fifty over the next couple of months before the rains come. Time to go then, in more ways than one, and I think we need to let said dust settle a bit before we form any lasting impressions of India. The Indian government has recently proudly announced that it now has the capacity to launch rockets into space, which can destroy satellites, and one cannot help but think that the billions of dollars that this would have cost might have been better spent trying to raise the living - standards of some of its' populous, but in truth it probably wouldn't have scratched the surface.
The people of India (that we met) are wonderful, the way that so many of them have to live is not. We have known for a long time that India was a place that we would have to visit one day, and we are glad that we have, and a positive of our time there was the skill of its' artisans, who work with just as much skill with stone as they do with silk, and had the small cases that we travel with not already been bursting at the seams we would have come away with a lot more of the fine craftsmanship that is everywhere a part of the place.
So, did we find the soul of India? I don't know, really, and I think we need to put more time and thought between us and our visit to reach any conclusions in this regard. Perhaps it lies in the truly magnificent forts and palaces, which are a part of a bygone era, although the Maharaja of Jaipur still lives in one, his inherited position nowadays being only symbolic, and an echo of the way things used to be.
Or maybe it lies in the average street in the average village or town. (We deliberately avoided the biggest cities). Walk down said average street and there's a man sitting in the doorway of his small home mending a plastic chair which he found somewhere; when you have nothing, everything is worth something. Next door a beautiful Indian woman, wearing her beautiful sari, is on her hands and knees washing her tiled floor; she is clearly very proud of her tiled floor. Outside in the street, an old woman is diligently going through a pile of rubbish with a stick, you never know, somebody might have left something there which they didn't want, but she does. A young guy walks past selling traditional brushes from a handcart, which he and his wife will probably have manufactured the evening before. He's got about 50 brushes to sell, and if he sells enough then he'll make enough money to feed his family today, and he'll get up and do the same thing tomorrow. It's a hard life, but he'll do okay, it's the way he's always lived, and I daresay always will, and anyway, that's India for you.