Advertisement
Published: February 3rd 2013
Edit Blog Post
NOTE TO THE READERS - fricking site. I can't seem to add photos to the text in the same document. It will be a quite garbled as the photos must be loaded separately. Wherever you see a gap, insert the appropriate photo from the list of photos soon to be uploaded.
Notes From A Dug: Udaipur Roadshow My last post may have led you to believe that the road from Jodhpur to Udaipur was uneventful. Not a chance. We made three stops along the way. The first was a "you've got to be kidding" stop. Picture your vehicle cruising or, in our case, bumping along a marginally paved rural road. "Bobby", our magic man, all of a sudden pulls over. He says we need to see this shrine. We ask why. He says it is a shrine to the motorbike. "Oh, Bobby, move on down the road. Ha, ha and all that." He says he isn't kidding. We think he has something up his sleeveless arm. We indulge our man. He's not fricking kidding. In the middle of nowhere is a shrine to a 50 or 60 year old Royal Enfield motorbike. Now, this is nuts. Even nuttier are
the 20 or so devotees that file past this wacky display. Either this bike produced miracles out its exhaust or it was one of the shots from Easy Rider that got left on the cutting room floor. Anna says, "I gotta get a picture of this for my crew of women bikers back home." See what it is below:
Accompanying this was a father on camel drum with his seven year old son wailing on a harmonium. This is way beyond weird. We get dotted on the forehead as we walk by in the dust and the cow dung and the reverence that surrounds the Royal Enfield only 20 feet off the main drag from Jodhpur to Udaipur.
Next stop, the Ranakpur Temples. These are Jain temples built about 600 years ago and is the "come home to momma" site for all the Jain priests and nuns in this part of India. Carved out of local marble, protected by a ring of mountains and built on flat, stable ground, it has resisted the marauding attempts by invaders over the centuries. The Jains are a fascinating element of Indian life as both sects of Jainism
renounce all possessions; the second sect going to the point where the priests renounce all clothing. Jain priests and nuns will only stay a maximum of three days in any location so as not to form any attachments. They also forsake any connection with family. The only form of transport they use is their feet. Walking from place to place, eating only one palm-full of food each day, they only accept food if it is offered. They never ask for anything and have every hair in their body pulled out by the roots, one by one. They dress in pure white, wear thin white cloth around their mouths and noses in order to prevent the accidental ingestion of any insect and sweep the ground in front of them with a corn straw broom, trying to prevent the death of any small creature. Five women and a Dug keep all their clothes on and try to step lightly on the bugs. Ironically the secular Jains (those who maintain the mental rigour of the faith without the radical elements of the practice) are regarded as the best business people in India due to their ability to stay focused and eliminate distractions. They
also hire Hindus to keep their temples maintained 'cause they're too busy out walking and talking, spreadin' the joy. Take a look below and pay particular attention to the bug-squishers from Canada.
From here, we kept moving on to Udaipur. But Bobby had one more delight for us. Not too far from Ranakpur he pulled off to the side of the road, made a U-turn and went back toward the temples. We thought he had forgotten something. No, what he wanted was to take us to an ox-driven water wheel. We all got out, met a wonderfully simple, radiant family. Through hand gestures, they invited all who wanted to take a turn driving the oxen. Four of us did. Then Granny showed up. Like an old iron pot, she soon had those oxen slapped into shape. Barking orders like an Egyptian dictator, those oxen knew the force was upon them. I think I saw her spit out some chewing tobacco and take a snort of Ganges-distilled, 300 malt, Indian whiskey. We loved every minute of it.
We landed in Udaipur close to dusk. Our hotel was high in the hills overlooking the townsite. I won't even attempt to describe the setting - see for yourselves:
We now had only one more day before Lisa and Anna left us for the -35 degree weather of the Alberta hinterland. It looked like it would be a great setting in the middle of the Indian sub-continent in which the Five Women and a Dug could spend their last 24 hours as travel buddies.
The next day we spent at the City Palace, doing a speed tour of a 200 year old garden, and taking a slow boat around Lake Piccola in order to better appreciate the lives lived by the Maharana warrior-kings that have ruled here for over 900 years. Along the way, we convinced our singing guide to do an impromptu performance backed up by our Bollywood twins, Lisa & Anna. He sang, they extemporized . It will make for a great video and I will be taking orders soon for one more in a long list of outrageous, unrehearsed, spontaneous moments.
And, here they are, the girls in the band:
Advertisement
Tot: 0.066s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 6; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0314s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb