Advertisement
Bundi
The first three photos are from Bundi - this is another view of the palace on the hill.My next three destinations all occupy the southern section of the very large state of Rajastan. After leaving Bundi, my next destination was a whistle stop tour of Chittorgarh, a town boasting what is billed as the finest fort in Rajastan, as well as some one-of-a kind architecture that you just have to visit to appreciate. The town isn't supposed to be that great to stay in, so I went to Udaipur that evening, which is widely considered to be most romantic city in the 'Stan.
I wanted to describe an experience I had riding the train - I had to buy an unreserved seat ($1) on the train because I was buying the ticket just before it arrived, but the unrerverved seating cars where it entitled me to sit had people hanging out of the doors and windows (as usual), so I sat in the reserved section anyway, which was not crowded. When the conductor checked my ticket, he told me that the supplemental fee would be 77 rupees ($1.75) which seemed wrong to me, to pay almost twice as much for the reservation as the ticket. So I motioned as if I was going to move to the
Bundi - Monkey
This local resident stopped to palaver with me by the fort other car... I'm not sure if he was trying to rip me off at first, or was just being nice later, but he asked me if I would settle for 40 rupees, which sounded more fair, so I paid it. In Italy, I would have been thrown in jail for pulling a stunt like that!
Chittor (as it is commonly known here - Indians tend to truncate ponderously long town names) was exactly as promised. The victory tower is a marvelously intricate nine story monument, with each floor carved inside and out with elaborate human and animal figures and geometric patterns. The ruins of the palace in the fort are evocative of Roman ruins I've seen in Italy - an extensive labyrinth of crumbling walls with no roofs. These was also a quirky Sky-Clad Jain temple with photographs of devotees from a unique sect of the religion where the monks wear nothing but what their mama gave 'em. I'm sorry I couldn't get any shots of that.
Having sucked the marrow from Chittor, I jumped on a bus bound to arrive at Udaipur several hours later. I need to start by saying that Udaipur is pleasant, but I
Bundi - Fort
This formidable gate kept undesirable enemy soldiers on the pointy side. I squeezed through that little cutout! thought it overrated. It is immensely refreshing to be near a lake in such a mercilessly dry climate, and it has two rather spectacular palaces. However, the town center is so completely focused on the tourist industry that I found it disorienting to be there: Am I in India? Or some sort of tourism hell?? L'enfer, c'est les tourist shops. You can't walk ten feet without having somebody calling after you to get your attention, asking you your name, how you are. I know I've complained about this before, but it was bad here. Bad.
Udaipur has two grand palaces. One is the highly photogenic lake palace, which, perched on an island in the lake, appears to float as if picked from some estate on the riviera and dropped there by a giant bird. The other is the massive city palace, which might be very impressive, if 80% of it (at least!) weren't off limits due to its modern role in the luxury hotel industry.
I need to stop to explain an observation here - India, like its one time colonist England, still has an extensive system of symbolic royalty in place. These people are known as "maharajas",
and, while I don't think they get paid by the state, they still hold vast portfolios of highly valuable land which used to be royal palaces, gardens, hunting grounds, etc. Since they have to continue their royal lifestyles, and working would be unseemly, just about all of them hire out their properties as museums and/or hotels. It is a good thing that they have had to do this, because it allows me, as a tourist, to gain entry to these sites that would otherwise be accessible only to people of blue blood. However, when the palace is converted to a hotel, it retains an element of snobbery, as they are naturally unable to let grubby backpackers wander their halls when hotel guests are paying $200 to $400 a night to stay there. This is an astronomical amount of money in India, where many people earn less than $50 in a month. In Udaipur, the snobbery of the staff at these fancy hotels was pervasive, since there are three such establishments, and they occupy two of the most important monuments in the city (the Udaipur City Palace is divided into two different hotels, for reasons which were not offered to me).
Victory Tower
This nine story tower speaks for itself. Anyway, if it wasn't clear from preceding paragraph, I resent this prostitution of India's cultural monuments on behalf of an undeserving aristocracy and think they should be forced to live like normal people, allowing the city to elect to use of the monuments as it sees fit. I know. How American of me.
However, the lake palace, though I was not permitted to visit it, was very photogenic, as you can see. I took high tea at a restaurant at the City Palace, so I could see a little bit of the inside (they made me buy a ticket to be admitted to the grounds nonetheless). The cakes were what you could buy in a store, and the waiters inexplicably insisted that I must have Darjeeling Tea with the cakes. I know this sounds picky, but Darjeeling is a very light tea, and does not go with milk, which is what I wanted. This is India, damnit! They are the only country in the world that actually
might have more tea than China! When one is paying 20 times as much as one would at a shop just outside the palace gates, one should expect better service than this.
Interior Detail - Victory Tower
The walls were alive with carvings. Nonetheless, the setting and service (and confectionry) was suitably crusty, so I left satisfied that I had gotten the experience I expected. This episode reinforced my feelings about the maharaja-palace-hotel scam.
That evening, I went to a dance performance at a histioric haveli (mansion) called Bagore-Ki Haveli. The show consisted of one to five women doing traditional dances of the region dressed in vibrantly colored saris, clanging the indian version of castinets and using sinuous, hypnotic hand and arm motions. Here, I saw the famous pot-on-head dance, where a woman balances eight or nine stacked water pots on her head while stepping on things that would appear likely to cause permanent injuries to the feet, such as swords, a pair of glasses (whole) and glass (broken). Even though they make it look easy, it still looks really really hard. For the first time in this rather negatively-toned essay (sorry!), I have nothing to complain about.
Another reason I failed to enjoy Udaipur to its fullest is no fault of its own - the weather started to hit 104 degrees (40 C) in midday, which knocked me out from about 11:30 to 4. I knew I had to escape.
Typical Rajastan Landscape
Here's what it looks like in the places where there are no forts or temples. I just had to figure out how...
And then it hit me - I needed to visit a hill station! Hill stations are towns built up in the hills by the delicate British to escape the summer heat. Rajastan has exactly one, called Mt Abu, perched atop a modest mountain range on the southern border or Rajastan, near Gujarat. It's 1200 meters up, and, when I say cooler, I mean 95 instead of 105, so no need to bring your fleece. You might want a thin long sleeve shirt if it's windy at night.
So, I took another six hour bus ride to Mt Abu. You could feel the air getting cooler as the bus labored up winding mountain roads. When it dropped me off at the top, I was shocked to observe that it actually did feel almost comfortable. This is the sort of place where you just kick back and relax. One day, I went on a hike into the dry rocky hills. I slept late. I visited a scenic overlook and watched the sunset. It felt like a vacation from a vacation. There is, however, one really world class monument in this town that you
Fame Tower
Chittor's *other* tower, build by a Jain merchant to glorify the Jain saints, called Tirthankars, is no less intricate. can't miss if you are anywhere near here - it's called Dilwara, and it's a complex of Jain temples that my guide book said have some of the most spectacular stone carving that you can ever expect to see. It's tough to turn down a recommendation like that, eh? Tragically, they do not allow you to take photographs indoors, so you will have to content yourself with these. Suffice it to say that it lived up to its billing. The carved stone in these temples is dizzying to look at. I can't imagine how there was enough skill to produce the endlessly varied forms that emerge from every surface. Maybe if it were carved from butter rather than hard stone! Some sinuous decorative forms look more like lace than they do marble. It is said that the stone carvers were paid in gold equal to the weight of the marble dust that they extracted from their carvings. This sounds a little bit too expensive to afford, but I'm willing to believe they were paid in proportion to the weight.
Well, I think I shall take this opportunity to post what I've written. My third and final installment on
Jain Temple Interior
This is the first glimpse of the impossibly intricate stone carving that adorns the inside of many Jain temples. Just wait until we get to Mt Abu! Rajastan will cover Jodhpur, aka "The Blue City", Jaisalmer, and Bikaner. As for me, I am presently in a cozy little mountain town deep in the Himalayas called Manali. Tomorrow, I shall be reach Darjeeling, and Two weeks from now, I will touch ground in New York! I hope this finds you well.
Dan
Advertisement
Tot: 0.173s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 70; dbt: 0.0738s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Kim Jong II
R. C. S.
Blue Blood
Dude, I'm confused, I thought your blood turned blue at New Haven....?