Notes from a Dug - Jodhpur to Udaipur

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January 30th 2013

Published: January 30th 2013

Notes from a Dug - Jodhpur to Udaipur

Five hours on the road from Jaisalmer and we pull our lassi-impregnated bodies into Jodhpur. One very neat thing about road travel here is the road-side oasis. These road stops are like Auto-Grills in Italy or Gasoline Alley in Red Deer except they don't clean the toilets. However, the knick-knack shops are spiffed and ready for our cash. Unfortunately for them (and us), we're here to pay the big rupee to use the poopy toilets and would gladly pay extra to find a clean seat. So, no money in the shops as we use a soiled ten rupee ($0.20) note to skid through the washrooms. However, once past the biffy gauntlet, one does enter an oasis. Sweeping branches of Acacia trees, cool breezes, outdoor eating areas of neatly clothed tables. This part is very relaxing. The only thing to avoid are the Aloe-very (their spelling) drinks. Lisa indulged and fought the gag-reflex. Doug indulged and decided eating old boogered hankies was a better choice. If you do come to India, though, be sure to try the "Special Sandwich". Its ingredients ebb and flow from place to place but it's always good; the Indian version of a club sandwich.

The other must-do, can't avoid on a road trip is the traffic. Picture yourself with 900 lives. You will use them all up in 900 seconds on the Indian "freeways". These roads are actually free-for-all's. Screaming crazy doesn't capture it. Madness on wheels makes it sound like a carny ride. Being a passenger on these roads involves calling in all your favours and invoking every mantra you can muster. Normal is driving into traffic on the wrong side of the road. Normal is doing the cow slalom and not clipping their sashaying butts. Normal is the horn screeching cacophony. Normal, ironically, is surviving this. We are always clapping for "Bobby", our driver, as he squeezes our vehicle into the boneless shape of a rat as we emerge once more alive from inevitable carnage and mayhem.

So, on a carpet of lotus flowers, we do arrive undamaged at our next location, Jodhpur. Home of the Jodhpur riding breeches and the blue-washed homes of the Brahmins, this second largest city in Rajasthan is also home to Mansingh, a guide with a ferocious sense of right, wrong and punishment for the transgressors. A perfect fit for the six miscreants in front of him. Mansingh is our 60 year old, Dudley-Do-Right. Almost a caricature of the pompous remnants from the British Rah, and dressed in a modified safari suit, jungle hat and ever-so-flattering breeches, he led us through the Mehrangarh Fort, a forbidding structure sitting 400 feet up a sheer rock face. He kept us moving on a forced march through the various points of interest and found time to rip a strip off a group of Indian tourists who were sitting, verboten, on an historic cannon. We could have used him the previous night when an unruly family of eight punctured our mealtime delight at the hotel in Jaisalmer. That family would have been only a sampler plate for our Mansingh.

Following a perfunctory explanation of the various displays within the fort's museum quality artifacts, we made our way to the holy grail of the lassi kingdom. I have had a lassi pretty much every day since we arrived. It is a sweetened yoghurt drink that helps moderate many of the local spices. The lassi served in this small, twenty person, walk-in closet was the thickness of cooling rubber but with a sweet lemon flavour. Like the Colonel's secret 20 herbs & spices chicken, I'll have to see if I can unlock the mystery when I get home.

Later in the afternoon, Mansingh ordered up two Jeeps and took us about 30 minutes out of Jodhpur to visit three working homesteads. At one, the family made clay pots that they traded with other villagers. At another, they operated a subsistence five acre plot that fed three families. They grew millet, lentils and sesame and got their milk from a three animal herd of water buffalo. The last stop was a thirty generations old family of weavers. Now members of a weaving cooperative, they specialized in carpets and dhurries. While we six gleaned what we could, Mansingh the magnificent indulged himself in a 30 minute nap behind a pile of carpets.

Once again, though, it was another day of comedy, friendship and street bonding as we joined hands and tip-toed and pirouetted our way across twelve lanes of traffic.

Notes from a Dug - Jodhpur to Udaipur

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