maharajas and meanderings

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Dlehi is a much more weldcoming city than Bombay. Wide open avenues installed by the British make it much easier to get around. Old Delhi is all mosqeus and souks entwined with hanging electric cables like broken spiders webs, which make you wonder how any city birds avoid electrocution.
What I did see for the first time was the overt begging. Parents refuse to have their leper childrne cured so that they can push them up against tourist taxi windows, exchanging the sight of their weeping, bleeding sores for a few rupees of pity.

At Agra, the level of hassle was also unparralleled. Pretending to be French, Italian, Spanish or Russian doesn’t help as these accomplished salesmen (yes, always male, though often children) speak at least 5 languages each.
Travelling with two well-dressed, obviously moneyed and somewhat naïve middle aged Europeans did nothing to discourage our pursuers.

The Taj is indeed breathtaking and surprisingly peaceful despite the (mostly Indian) tourists. It gave sanctuary from the blatent commercialism and bargaining outside its gates.Countless guides told one of the greatest love stories of history. That of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz, his preferred of 14 wives. Like a schoolgirl I sniggered at the romance, preferring the more realistic tale that, the great Shah, imprisoned by his fratrecidal son, died, not of heartbreak, but of an overdose of opium and aphrodisiacs after vigorous bout of sex. Not a bad way to go for a septagenarian.

The tomb is believe to be intended a a reproduction of God’s throne, which is fairly in keeping with the monumental erections to megalomania that pepper the Rajasthani landscape.

From Delhi and Agra it was on to Jodphur (where we stayed in a converted temple and prayed to our own caffeine god). The city centres around its vibrant market square offering silks, spices and cottons and the exquisite Merehangarh fort.

The maze of higgledy piggledy streets leads up to this 18th century citadel. Buttresses and towers overlook the indigo-tinged city below. The colour of the houses acts a mozzie repellent. (Note to self: wear more blue in future.). Despite its dominance in Rajputan hisotry the fort (www.mehrangarh.org) fell into decay until the Oxford-educated Maharaja (who took office at the ripe old age of 4), took it upon himself to find funding t restore the previously glorious citadel. Now tourists can ogle at the site of mass ‘sati’ where wives committed suicide after the death of Maharaja Man Singh in 1843 (ignoring the fact that the British had made ‘sati’ illegal by then). The handprints of these condemned women mark the main gates to the fortress in a macabre monument to the funeral pyre.
Whilst at the fort I paid the royal astrologer to read my palm. Fortunately I was not wearing nail varnish (as if??) for this apparently disrupts his powers.

1. I am very sensitive. Things stay with me for a long time, particularly is someone has betrayed me.
2. I have allergies
3. I had a major relationship around the age of 21
4. Another one around the age of 31
5. I either trust people completely or not at all
6. There is cancer in my family
7. I am a perfectionist
8. If a relationship is not important to me, I drop it
9. I am very fertile (!)
10. I will get married when I am 36
11. I will have no problems in love
12. However work only starts to get good for me aged 45….
13. it is good for me to travel and be involved with international organisations
14. I have a sensitive stomach
15. I love nature and being in nature.

You can decide which of those might be true…

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Comments

[Jim D]

Nice post...
Nice blog, nice photo too. But I fear for your typing. Must be all the sex and opiates... Jx

[stephanie]

Heyyyy......the return of the blog!
Ta for the blog Susie, cheered up a dull, wet January morning no end! Enjoy the last of your holiday.