Notes from a Dug - Bikaner to Jaisalmer

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Notes from a Dug - Bikaner to Jaisalmer

Based on the notes I had, Bikaner should have been a small desert outpost. My understanding was that even infrastructure for the Internet was unavailable. Was I ever mistaken. We entered Bikaner, home to 750,000 citizens; home to the Maharajah, home to his palace where the royal family still lives. Guess where we stayed? Yup, at the royal palace. Half of it had been converted to guest accommodation for travellers. Not only did we have huge staterooms where once Dickie and Edwina Mountbatten walked the halls, we were also ensconced in a separate area that opened to a courtyard the size of two Calgary backyards. We're in heaven, la, la, la (hum a few more bars of that song to yourselves). We had deck chairs brought out for the five lovelies and a Dug and sat for a half-hour or so in the blinding desert sun before going to meet Jittu, our guide. First stop, the Junagarh Fort. Jittu boasted that we would not see a fort as beautiful as what we were about to see. Sure, sure we all said quietly to ourselves. More disingenuous self-promotion. Well, boil our tongues in a vat of mutton grease. This fort was startlingly amazing. Having never been conquered and the plundering British kept at bay and out-foxed by the brilliance of a statesman Maharajah in the mold of Kemal Ataturk, this fort was very much intact. The dry desert air has helped preserve its ornamentation and frescoes. Built and added to over the centuries it was, just as Jittu described, without peer.

At this point, all of us looked at each other and wondered why we were here for only one night. Pushkar should remain as it is, a fart in the desert wind and Bikaner should be treasured and given another day on anyone's tour through this slice of India. The counter-point to this was provided by Jittu. He said Bikaner does not promote itself and tourists, especially of the white variety, are infrequently seen. This also explains why we were not accosted once by hawkers, touts or pickpockets. The only greasy monkey we came across was a lard-ass Hindu-American from Vegas, back home to lord it over the local rubes and trying to ingratiate himself with the five lovelies but not the glowering Dug. The locals are happy to not be on the map as it allows them to appreciate their town and their lives without the foolishness that the tourist trade brings. That being said, we were here to be foolish. Next stop, street food. Lisa, the woman that knows no poop, put her hand up for some sort of deep-fried chimi-chunga, walla-walla, bing-bang pellets. We all joined in except for the never-timid Anna and the ever-vigilant Terry. Terry pursed her lips in the shape of a squeezed sphincter and Anna, in an attempt at group redemption, inadvertently made her way to a street barber to have her eyebrows threaded. The Dug thought that meant she would have dreads woven in over her eyes to form some type of burka. Ha, ha, laughed the five lovelies. Street barber approaching on the right. Perplexed, bothered and bewildered (another big tune from years gone by), the barberman takes on his first white female customer. A small crowd gathers. An even larger crowd, with eyes right and left, passes by. Anna takes the chair; the full authority of a Maharini now on display. Out comes the thread. Out come the eyebrows. A woman shorn is a woman re-born. Smooth eyelids, smooth forehead. Hopefully not to be re-grown as forehead stubble.

"My take on the threading experience....... After our street food experience, I thought I d inquire where the nearest salon was located. 'Just a 1 hundred meters ahead and on your right' said the shopkeeper. We meandered our way through the narrow alleyway flanked by sari, shoe and confectionary shops all the while dodging people, bikes and scooters, accompanied by the constant horn opera that we've become accustomed to in India. We had surpassed the 100 meter point and realized that the salon I had inquired about was in fact a barbershop. I was reassured by our guide that he was competent and I could have faith in his ability to deliver my much coveted eyebrow threading. Back in Calgary, I visit the home of Pujminder, my Punjabi esthetician, and I always come out with the most perfectly shaped eyebrows with this ancient Indian technique.

As he started to thread I was being informed by my fellow travellers that a crowd had started to form around the spectacle. A white woman, was being threaded in the barbershop by a male barber. He started with the the top end of my brows and then moved upwards towards my forehead ending at my hairline. Before I knew it, my whole forehead had been threaded. When finished, he asked me to look in the mirror to see if I was pleased with the results. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the workmanship left me slightly disappointed, but then I realized women clients were not his forte, in fact I had been his first woman client and a white woman at that. I believe that he will prosper and become a celebrity in this town of 700,000 inhabitants and people will come from near and far to see The Barber. The man who threaded the white woman tourist with the story carried down for generations to come." - Anna

The freshly plucked Anna joins the rest of the fully-haired crew and we continue our walk, white deities in a sea of brown faces. Jittu takes us to the sixth generation studio of an extended family of artists that do miniature paintings. We meet the new generation of artists in the form of a twenty-six year old young man who has been doing this work for 13 years and has already been to France for a year to further his studies. Gentle, polite and charming, he walks us through the full process of how they make their colours to the traditional style of painting they want to preserve. Half of us buy some of their works. Doug has a rural landscape and an elephant painted on one fingernail. That finger will stay out of his nose for the rest of the trip.

We return to "our" palace for the night and eat dinner where, in the past, only royalty, dignitaries and celebrities would have supped. We start to feel a part of that constellation as Anna gets her forehead stroked by staff who have heard of her fame. It was a great day and we will be saddened when we depart.

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..

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Until, that is, we find out that tonight we will be staying in another of the Maharajah's palaces in Jaisalmer. Shallow lot that we are, we start to look forward to the next stop on our royal tour.

Hugs,

All of us

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