A Few of Many Photos from Udaipur

1. View of Udaipur rooftops, Monsoon Palace in the distance
2. Jagdish Temple in town center
3. View from Hanuman Ghat
4. Lal Ghat
5. Sunset at Monsoon Palace
6. Courtyard in City Palace

More later!

delhi

If India is a land of contradictions, Delhi is that, magnified. New Delhi reminds me of Canberra - spread out, leafy, parks, roundabouts. Old Delhi is crowded, with huge markets and tons of people. We wandered through the fabric market, the paper goods market, and the heavy machinery market, where you can buy a drill press off the street. Today we also visited the Qutb Minar, one of the historical sites I studied in school. It's a minaret that towers over the whole area, signalling the presence of the mosque in the complex. The Minar and the mosque were built between 1100 and 1330 by various rulers, who took parts of Hindu and Jain temples to make them. Because of this, as you walk through, all three religions are represented.

Sarah and I are learning our way around our corner of Delhi - which is nice - it's good to be able to walk to the market and get to know a few places that we like.

love and money

Agra is famous for the Taj Mahal, and infamous for its vendors, touting every knick-knack known to man. They also do beautiful inlay marble work, in designs native to here or imported from Italy.

I'm in the middle of the city and a camel just walked down the street - yesterday they were a novelty to me, today they are old news. I've become fascinated by the creative forms of transportation here: today I counted walking, two-wheeled cart pulled by ox, buffalo, camel, horse or person, bicycle rickshaw, auto rickshaw, bicycle - with or without three other people on it with you and all their luggage, motorcycle - with or without family of four including mother riding sidesaddle in sari, bus, car, three-wheeled truck, elephant. I tried to take a picture of what was happening on the road today and realized there's really no way to capture the speed and craziness of getting around. The eye just catches so much more than the camera.

Driving on the bus from Jaipur to Agra was an experience. Whole families work together on the side of the road, making bricks, farming. In the villages, it is clear that people don't have enough work - sitting around, passing time, playing cricket.

frenetic and famous

I had a relaxing last day in Udaipur yesterday - since I had seen most of the sights and done my shopping, I took to wandering around some of the less-touristy areas. I met some very kind local artists who showed me how they do their work, creating miniature paintings in the studio next to their shop. They start with raw pigment and grind it into powder to make the paint, which they layer onto silk to make intricate scenes - animals, couples, castles. I met a couple from Ireland and Australia, with whom I had dinner and watched the obligatory Octopussy, which every hotelier will remind visitors, was partly filmed in Udaipur.

After another overnight train, this time in 2nd class - with many people around but my own curtained-off area, I arrived in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. It is a frenetic and unhappy city, with dilapidated palaces that smell of urine, where the corners are brown where the men spit tobacco. I am now also famous. Teenagers ask me to pose while they take pictures - but no requests for autographs yet. They do have cycle-rickshaws, which are pretty cool, and I hired one for Rs 200 to take me around the city. One day was enough, though, and I'm happy to be moving on to Agra tomorrow.

lake and palace country

Udaipur is a beautiful city. It is located on several manmade lakes in the middle of the desert, and tall guesthouses boast their rooftop restaurants with views of the water and surrounding hills. I am staying in a guesthouse in the old city's Lal Ghat area, which has a lot of tourists but is convenient to everything. At the street level, shops sell everything from antique jewelry to kitchen ware and a lot of folk art. Fabrics and miniature paintings are the main thing. Yesterday I went out of the city to a village where artists come to work and sell their wares, and for the chance to try to sell something, they'll explain how they do their art. One Gujarati sari weaver spins silk and tie-dyes the thread according to a complex pattern laid out on graph paper so the pattern emerges as he weaves. Another fabric artist creates elaborate bedspread-sized pieces using dye and wood-block stamps which he carves by hand. They come in all patterns and colors - most too busy for my taste but lovely nonetheless.

Rajasthan was a tribal and warlike state, but much of the art and architecture was created at the same time - and about 500 years before western Europe's renaissance. The forts and walls of the city are carved. On the top of one hill outside the city perches the Monsoon Palace - beautiful white marble with a small terraced garden. It is a bit dilapidated, but has great views of the city and it is easy to tell why they built it there - it has a constant breeze.

Life is not easy here - my driver for the afternoon yesterday said he is paid a monthly salary of 2000 Rs by the hotel, which turns out ok in tourist season when tips are good, but he resorts to working the land in the summer when it is too hot for tourists to visit. His is originally from a village about 35 Km from town. Buses that go there pack 150 people in, on and around them for the trip. A 10-seater jeep making the same trip will carry 47 people. Work is scarce and largely craft and tourist dependent - so far I have not seen other sources of income. The power goes out from around midnight till 11AM too, so a new type of business would be hard to start if it was too reliant on electricity. Internet is paid for by bandwidth usage. Rightly, education in this area focuses on training healthcare workers, as public health is a huge issue - but I'm beginning to see that if other parts of the infrastructure are not improved as well, and these highly intelligent people do not have access to other types of education, there will be little improvement. Though the living is relatively easy for the western tourist, it is hard to watch every person struggle to survive and provide a decent, hopefully better, life for their children. And it is certainly hard to attempt to come up with viable solutions. On one hand, we say that India is the world's largest democracy and a huge, growing market - but I have yet to see a lot of people who really benefit from these things.

And finally - on request from my grandmother, an explanation as to why the cows are so funny. Since they're the holiest animal in the Hindu religion, they do whatever they want, and they wander free through the streets. People feed them, but mostly they eat garbage. They lie in the middle of the road, basking in the sun, and people wanting to drive past just wait - they won't prod them out of the way. So maybe it's the people who are hilarious. At any rate, it's quite amusing.

saying yes, driving, and other observations

Yes means no and no means yes on opposite day. In India, yes looks like maybe and no means maybe until you say it three times. To say yes, instead of nodding, bring ear to shoulder and say in a disappointed-sounding voice 'okaay.' It's taken me some time to figure out that people aren't actually disappointed with whatever I've said.

To drive in India, you must have a good horn. Awoogah horns are the best, but any will do. Honk anytime you're turning, passing, parking, backing, changing lanes, speeding up or slowing down. Weave as much as possible, especially if it's on the wrong side of the road. Don't use headlights at night except if you want to accent the message you're conveying with the horn. If you want to hire a driver, choose one that describes himself with at least two of these words: in uniform, courteous, kind, friendly. Don't worry about getting a description of his driving capability. And if you rent a motorcycle, the best place for your helmet to ride appears to be resting on the handlebars.

I've found that while India is a very cheap place to travel, absolutely nothing is free or complementary. Every garden and museum costs at least a few rupees, and if you want to bring a camera, it's a few more.

Traveling alone started yesterday, and so far it's been fine. I've been pre-arranging as much as possible so I don't have to be mobbed by rickshaw drivers at every train station. People say that unmarried women traveling alone have problems keeping men away from them, but I've found that when asked 'are you married,' if I simply say NO and scowl, that seems to work well. Or a quick explanation that "american customs are very different from indian ones" staves off further advances. Traveling on the train alone presents a different problem. First class is the best, but then you're in a lockable compartment with a stranger. If that's the case, do you choose upper or lower bunk - easy escape or more privacy? It almost makes me inclined to travel a lower class simply for more people being around and less opportunity for anything unsavory to happen.

Eating safely isn't as hard as I thought it might be. Sure, I can't get a good spinach salad, but it's easy to peel most anything - and there are lots of baked, grilled, boiled and fried things that no bacteria could live on.

The cows are hilarious.

From Pune

I arrived in Mumbai two days ago and came straight to Pune, and it's been a funny transition. I'm struck more by how many things are similar and how many things actually do make sense - rather than how many things are different. It's noisy - and dusty - and hot - but Pune is also a very cosmopolitan city, more western and liberal than I'm told other areas are.

It helps that I haven't had to get around by myself yet, I'm sure. I was picked up at the airport by Sarah and one of her Indian friends, who negotiated us from a rickshaw to a bus station that tried to charge too much, to the Mumbai local train that brought us to another bus stop and onto the bus that dropped us off three hours later around the corner from Sarah's host family. From her apartment, you can walk to all the necessities of life here - the market, restaurants, the tailor, the internet cafe.

Yesterday we ventured further, and I got to see a bit of the areas where Sarah spends her time. Her university is a peaceful complex of buildings separated from the chaos of the city by greenspace - forest really - and the public health building is a cool, almost European style place. By western standards, the classrooms are primitive and research equipment alarms beep incessantly without being attended to, but the people (at least the ones I met) are friendly and wonderful, and dedicated to improving public health.

Everybody shows an amazing generosity and hospitality. Sarah's friend met us yesterday evening to help me buy some traditional Indian clothing that will hopefully help me not stick out so much. He took us to a shop he knew, and three floors up we removed our shoes and sat on cushions while two shop attendants pulled item after item off their shelves and spread them in front of us. After much discussion over colors, patterns, length, stripes and sequins, I have a few things I can wear - for about $12. Life is good.

I'm trying to get used to some new things - like trusting a rickshaw wallah to take me safely where I want to go when there are no real traffic rules. In general, people drive on the left - but that's really more of a suggestion than gospel, and cars, auto-ricks, people and bicycles all share the same space.

In a few hours I'll get back on the bus and head back to Mumbai, to catch a domestic flight to Ahmedabad and then an overnight train to Udaipur. This will be the first of five days I'm traveling on my own this trip. I'll post again from there, and may even attempt to put up some pictures.

Itinerary

I leave for India on Saturday - my tentative itinerary is as follows:

11/19 - arrive in Mumbai, go straight to Pune (home of the infamous Ms. Kimball)

11/21 - back to Mumbai to fly to Ahmedabad and catch a bus to Udaipur, arriving early on 11/22

11/22-11/27 - Quick trip through the desert state of Rajasthan, starting in Udaipur, with stops in Jaipur and Agra

11/27-11/29 - in Delhi - and with Sarah for most of the rest of the trip

11/30 & 12/1 - conference on technology & privacy in Delhi

12/2-12/7 - Khajuraho and Varanasai, fly back to Delhi

12/8 - After a long train ride from Delhi, a day in Amritsar

12/9 or 12/10-12/14 - Dharmsala / McLeod Ganj, home of the Tibetan Gov’t in Exile. Apparently there’s a Himalayan festival there.

12/15-12/18 - back to Delhi for a bit of work

12/19 fly to Mumbai, return to Pune for a few days seeing Maharashtra with Sarah and Vivian

12/23 fly to Cochin with Sarah, Jeff & Vivian for our week-long tour of Kerala

12/31 fly back to Mumbai to catch my flight home on 1/1/07.