Mamallapuram and the Long Journey Home

As I write this entry, Charley and I are sitting in the sleeper class of a train bound for Delhi. We are twelve hours in - only one third of the way through. A man is crawling on the floor next to me, sweeping up our crumbs. He seems mute, and he is begging everyone in the compartment for change. I try to ignore him and keep on writing. None of the Indian boys around us are giving him anything, so I look to their example. But he's still here. I hope I have change in my wallet. I give him a meager 2 Rs I find there.

This train car feels like purgatory. Even though I went to a travel agent more than ten days ago and paid him for the express train with an A/C cabin, we landed on the slow train in a 3rd class sleeper. I never imagined before how elite my usual train class was - it's nothing special, you know. But here at every other stop beggars and peddlers are allowed to jump on and ride the train into the next station, which I've never seen before. Also, a man groped me last night. I was sleeping, lying on my back, and woke up to the feeling of a foreign hand squeezing my right breast. I was in shock and blind and surrounded by sleeping people, so I never saw the man's face or chased him down the aisle to reprimand him as he ran away. I hate that. I was once pick-pocketed on another train coming back from Calcutta, but luckily I caught the guy in the act. It's just so frustrating looking back on both those times and knowing that all the guts I had to react with was to shout "Hey!" and then some bastard got away with it. So, we're hot, getting bitten to death by mosquitoes because we have to keep the windows open, and surrounded by deformed beggars and perverts. I'd say purgatory is a pretty good description.

Anyway, when I last wrote I left off with us on that bus ride to Mamallapuram. We arrived in town and got a cheap hotel that backed onto the beach. It even made us promises of 24 hrs electricity and hot water. With a positive outlook, we decided to do nothing that afternoon but swim in the ocean and read our books on the beach. It's really nice and clean in Mamallapuram. On one side it's filled up with little fishing boats but when you walk up a little further there are some nice swimming spots where the water stays shallow until quite far out. Charley pointed out at the sea and said, "Wait, is that the equator I see?" The beach is also lined with cafe restaurants with names like Sea Breeze and Sunshine, but the real gem is the Bob Marley Cafe, which pumps out reggae tunes as you eat fresh seafood and look out at the ocean. Evidently Mamallapuram, even though it doesn't have the fresh salty air or crystal waters of say, the Andaman Islands or the Maldives, is desperate to be known as the next hip beach destination in India.

We were just coming back from an evening walk around the town, deciding where to go for dinner, when the hotel manager caught us at the door, turned to Charley and asked, "Hey, do you wanna be in a movie?" Apparently they were filming a Tamil movie nearby and needed some white men to play background as old English police officers. There was a taxi waiting outside to take us if we wanted to go, AND the production team would pay. Once again, Charley and I, faced with another prospect of minor Indian video stardom, smiled at each other and made a little head bobble of our own as if to say, "Why not?"

It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. We got there and it was already dark because it would be a night shoot (little did we know an all night shoot). Charley immediately changed into costume complete with gun holster, rank ribbons, and a moustache that made him look like Freddy Mercury. The rest of the extras were already decked out in similar dress and hairstyles. We met them - 6 in all and strangely all Eastern Europeans, Poles, and Russians, save for one Argentinian. We got to chatting and found out that they had all been picked up from ashrams and were affiliated with the production team - wherever they travelled to in India they'd get a call on their mobiles asking them if they'd like to make a little money as an extra in the latest colonial drama. One guy, Alex, had been living that way in India for five years. He was interesting - the kind of interesting that five years in India makes of you. He actually told Charley he only leaves the country to take vacations in Serbia where he can finally "clear his head." Hmmm... None of them knew each other going into the shoot. Apparently ashrams just seem to attract a lot of Russians seeking enlightenment through a baba/guru type person. But you could tell that they all got along like old friends now, constantly breaking into Russian (with many interjections of the word "vodka") and probably bonding over their shared difficulty of getting by knowing zero Hindi and not the best English.

We had to wait for the extras' part to be filmed basically all night, and tried to entertain ourselves. I kept trying to get Charley to sing some 'Killer Queen' or 'Bohemian Rhapsody' to me, which made him laugh and also made his moustache fall off, which pissed off the make-up guy. We took lots of silly pictures with the Russians. By 2am we'd been there for about seven hours and things started to get a little weird. The Euros had taken to displaying their somehow common skills in the martial arts and mock-fighting each other, making us wonder if we weren't involved in some kind of KGB-esque conspiracy. One of the guys, Pablo (they all had fabulous names - one was called Valentino) was a very spiritual person who sat meditating half the night. He talked with us in great depth about numerology and each of our respective numbers. I have to admit, he got me down to a tee, not that I hold any store in that kind of stuff. He's from Siberia and hates living in India but has somehow pushed through it for two years. He says Nepal is the real place to be. I wondered why he didn't just go there then.

This entire time the crew had been shooting the same scene for the movie. It was taking forever because the Tamil director needed to get every shot precisely right. The film, "Madhrasputtnam," was about an English girl whose father works for the East India Trading Company and how she falls into forbidden love with an Indian boy. It ends tragically of course, and we were on the second to last night of shooting when the girl's lover is killed and she has to pull his body from the lake up onto her boat. So there was this girl, lying in the boat playing half-dead while the director shouted through a microphone as he sat far off in a van, telling her where exactly to put her head, "A little left, now right, up a bit..." It went on for hours like that while we poor extras and even lowlier extra's affiliates (I was the only one) didn't even have chairs and were being massacred by bugs.

At long last it was 5am and the boys had to be shot before day break. Why they didn't just shoot their one simple part at the beginning of the night I'll never know. So with Charley gone I went off and sat next to the English actress' mother. She was a lovely lady from Liverpool and we talked for a while. Her motherly presence, I have to admit, was a comfort - she kept calling me "love." She said her daughter, Amy, got into the whole project because she won Miss Teen World. After that the Indians caught on because they just love that sort of thing, and they asked her to be in their movie without even a lick of acting experience. I just felt quite sorry for them because all they'd seen of India was Chennai (disgusting) and the lake where the shooting took place, which was no beauty either. I told her about some of the best and worst bits of India, my own little highlight reel, and I think it half blew her mind - she looked really sorry for me, even though that wasn't my intended reaction. The script writer came and sat next to us too - a really grumpy bugger who was English but has lived in India for the past thirty years. He'd never bothered in all that time to learn either Hindi or Tamil, seeming to prefer to just sit around on movie sets complaining about how ugly the language sounded or how much better he could do each crew member's job himself, grumbling, "Stupid, bloody Indians." Actually, he complained about just about everything, including the state of the police officer's dress and the extras' behaviour, right to my face. Well of course they didn't look as perfect as they did at the beginning of the night - you had us all hanging around in the dirt entertaining ourselves with strange calisthenics trying to stay awake! Surely, I hoped, all that bad temper wasn't just from living in India for so long?

The sunrise came and we had to wrap shooting. In the end I think Charley had a good time - he got to live out a boyish fantasy and parade around pretend shooting a rifle. The crew seemed a little intolerant of the extras and annoyed at the end, but I don't know how they could've expected anything better when you're bored, tired, and uncomfortable. We rode back with the Russians and finally saw them in their own clothes - all homespun hippy fabrics. Then we noticed the huge neo-Nazi tattoo on the side of Alex's arm and were really confused. What a strange night. We had to remind the guy who dropped us back off to pay Charley. He made 800 Rs (about $16) - at least it covered more than the cost of our room for two nights! 

We slept in for more than half of the next day. We had been planning on renting another moped ad driving around to the sites of Mamallapuram but ended up being way too tired, grumpy and hot. The power went out so many times that in the end Charley ran out to the reception desk in his boxers and asked the manager, "Where's that 24 hr electricity you promised us now, eh? Oh, and by the way, my girlfriend and I are checking out tomorrow but we're not leaving at noon, we're gonna stay here until 4 O'CLOCK. Got it?" In fact all we managed to do for the day was make the discovery that every restaurant in Mamallapuram serves Nutella crepes for dessert. We walked down the beach at sunset and treated ourselves to great seafood for dinner - calamari, prawns, and an entire fish in garlic butter sauce, yum!

We also made arrangements to treat ourselves to massages the next morning. One more interesting Mamallapuram experience of note! At 7am Charley and I found ourselves lying on massage beds being forcefully undressed by our respective masseur and masseuse. I heard Charley say through the curtain, "Wait, you want me to get naked?" and the masseur responding, "It's okay sir, I give you a string to wear," then Charley again asking, "a STRING? Jess?" At the same time I found it strange that even though I was only getting a facial the lady had to unbutton my bra and lie me down topless on my back. I wouldn't even have been half as uncomfortable if we had been in an actual massage parlour, but we were in somebody's house and even with an eye mask on I just knew there were people passing in and out. At least it was a woman, I consoled myself, but then Charley was finished before I was and went back to our room. When my face mask was removed by who I presumed was the same woman who had been treating me the whole time, imagine my surprise when I looked up and saw Charley's masseur! Ah well. It turns out this guy really got quite the eyeful that morning - Charley's 'string' get-up was really just that, a piece of dental floss around the waist and a strip of toilet paper tucked in the middle! Poor thing.

In our last few hours at Mamallapuram we finally saw the things you're supposed to see when you visit. There was the Tiger Cave, a 1,300 year-old auditorium carved out of stone and decorated with tiger heads. It lay buried unknown in the sand for centuries until the 2004 tsunami hit and washed part of the land out to sea. The same goes for many of Mamallapuram's archaeological sites, and just nearby to the Cave we saw a similar excavation site in progress. We also saw the Panch Rathas, five temples from the same time period as the Tiger Cave that were all carved out of one massive piece of granite. And of course there was also Krishna's Butterball - a precariously balanced round bit of stone on a very steep slope. The British tried to move it once for some reason but even with a team of elephants they couldn't get it to budge. We took the usual silly pictures in front of it that make you look like you're holding it up all by yourself. Then we made our last scooter ride of the trip back to our hotel, each commenting on how badly our mothers would freak out/ have a heart attack if they could have seen us just then, flying down an Indian highway, on an Indian bike, without helmets (sorry Mum!). As for me, I'm quite proud to say I have mastered the act of sitting side-saddle on the back of a motorbike that I previously thought only demure Indian women in sarees possessed.

And then, after a long uncomfortable bus ride to Chennai, we got onto the train for one more long, uncomfortable journey. Charley is in the next compartment over playing cards with a South Indian family, a girl in a sari on either side teaching him how to play. I feel happy, ultimately, when I think of my first trip to South India, despite its ups and downs, because I think of all of the friendly people we met along the way. There were the many bys who came up to us at the beach, just to make conversation, or the French-Moroccan lady we ran into both in Pondicherry and Mamallapuram. I won't forget the weird guy who served us at the New Cafe with the only Indian afro I've ever seen in my life, or the masseur who probably gets off humiliating white tourists with a bit of string and some toilet paper. This is what I think of now, all those happy faces and hopefully the many more to come, as I sit on a train that reminds me of purgatory passing through the middle of India.

Pondicherry

Our plane arrived in Chennai at nine o'clock, about an hour and a half late. We didn't know where to stay so we booked a pre-paid airport taxi to take us to the state bus depot, thinking that we might find a cheap hostel nearby and catch the earliest bus to Mamallapuram we could find in the morning. Then, driving through Chennai we saw what complete shit the city was. It was ugly, dirty, boring, and hot - everything the Lonely Planet's mediocre reviews prepared us for. We reached the bus terminal and thought we should at least have a look and see what time the bus would leave the next day for Mamallapuram. It was a total mess. No sign boards, people sleeping everywhere, people shouting, eating, begging, and using the bathroom everywhere. We found the docks for the buses going to Mamallapuram and Pondicherry right next to each other. No buses were lined up for Mamallapuram, but two were there for Pondy, gearing up to go. Neither of us much fancied staying a minute longer in Chennai, so Charley and I looked at each other with expressions of, "Why not?"

"I just have to pee really quickly," Charley said and darted off to a corner. Meanwhile I walked a few steps to buy us some mango juice for the ride as we hadn't had any dinner. Then I heard yells for "Pondy! Pondy!" and the whistle blowing and BOTH buses pulling away. I yelled out "CHARLEY" who was already zipping up and we ran and jumped to the bus. We made a split second decision to get on a four hour bus ride that wouldn't get into Pondicherry until 2am, not having any idea where we'd stay when we got there or if any of the guest houses would even be open to let us in.

It was nuts. Technically I was asleep for most of the time but we were clutching our bags hoping not to get pick-pocketed. We were the only white people on the bus and everyone was staring at us. I had to awkwardly change my shirt in my seat. There were five Hindu statuettes at the front with blinking lights that flashed between red and green. Charley tells me there was a dirty old man sitting in the seat over who was begging from him the whole time (for either drugs, food or money, he still doesn't know) and constantly staring. At one point he lit up a joint and the bus conductor stopped the driver, marched over, and forced the man to dump all his narcotics out the window before we moved on. Poor Charley stayed awake the whole time protecting me. What an experience for him on his first trip into a third world country! I've never even travelled like that within India before.

So anyway, we arrived at Pondicherry really early in the morning. Luckily we found a rickshaw driver who was obviously commissioned by this old French owner of a guest house to bring in travellers from the station, and he woke up the owner to let us in. Twenty four hours later I sat, writing in my diary, collecting my thoughts on the small former French colony. To my horror, I had already eaten two chocolate croissants, two mini quiche lorraines, half a chicken puff, one chicken and olive baguette, and was at the time working my way through a bottle of white wine with Charley. I didn't realize I was sick of Indian food until we found this amazing authentic French patisserie called Naker's Street. The town was so French! I heard the language being spoken everywhere. Our guest house owner was an old, pot bellied French man who walked around in a pair of swimming trunks and an unbuttoned shirt day and night. His wife was an Indian lady. All of the Indians in town seemed more likely to speak French than English as a second language, and definitely no Hindi so communication was quite different. We got around the city on a scooter that we rented out for 130 Rs a day. We only needed to put down a 500 R deposit on it too, it would have been so easy to run away with it! The streets weren't too crazy but I sat back and let Charley handle it.

It was so good to see the ocean again. We drove our little moto up to a small swimming beach in the afternoon out by Auroville, which is a sort of international colony where hippies from all over can join, meditate, and live in peace together. The water was amazingly warm but I must've been the only girl there and felt a bit self conscious - once again we were the only white people too, and we were really close-by to a small village and all its village fishermen who were looking on. A few young guys came up to us and within a few minutes declared us their 'best friends.' They made Charley jump in the waves with them and kept flexing their "gym bodies" for us. When they left, one of them pulled Charley in for a rib crunching hug. The look on his face was priceless. Then we retreated to our room and just lazed around drinking wine, looking out at the Bay of Bengal and enjoying the nice sea breeze.

We spent the rest of our stay in the town doing much the same thing. We rode around on that moped everywhere (or at least Charley did - all evidence concludes that I am too spastic for Indian roads) and we ate every meal, complete with chocolate croissant, at Baker's Street. We did find a famous temple dedicated to Ganesha while out one day. It has forty depictions of Ganesha's different attributes on its inside walls, and because Ganesha is the elephant-headed god, the temple also keeps a big Asian elephant outside to bless worshippers. The South Indian temple architecture is really reflective of its cultural surroundings - bright and colourful. Every face of its many sculptures was painted meticulously in blues, greens, pinks and oranges, and in the alley outside flower sellers sold lotuses in full bloom. On our last night in Pondy there was lightning in the far North. We got no thunder or rain where we were, so we just sat on the beach with a crowd of other people and watched the sky light up in silent flashes. An older lady came along and braided a strand of jasmine into my hair, the way that Tamil women wear it. Her smiles and affection made me feel like she was blessing me.

That next morning we jumped on a bus heading to Mamallapuram, or at least we hoped we did. It was really hard not being able to rely on my Hindi in the South as the regional language of Tamil is so totally different and the people that you really need to be able to speak English (like bus conductors) don't. We pointed to several buses and asked "Mamallapuram?" and got mixed head bobble responses, so we just had to follow our hunches for head bobble meanings. Thank god we made it there safely, uneventfully, and onto the next phase of our journey, and also with a few leftover pastries bought on take away in our luggage. I mean, just because we were leaving that sleepy French enclave behind didn't mean I was giving up my chocolate croissants.

Udaipur

For Charley's visit to India, the two of us decided to take one long ten day break visiting a few sites, as opposed to my usual weekend sojourns. The first stop along our route was in Udaipur, a city of lakes in Rajasthan nicknamed the 'Venice of the East.' It was as romantic as and charming as its reputation suggests, and so much more...

We arrived at 9am by overnight train from Delhi and were out of our comfy (expensive) hotel room by 10 to explore the City Palace Museum. The Rajput dynasty of the city built the second largest palace in the country, and I have to say it's more beautiful than any historical palace or fort I've seen in India so far. Built over 400 years ago on the banks of Lake Pichola, from its top floors the astounding views consist of the lakes and mountains on one side and all of Udaipur on the other. The palace had so much artwork from all points in the Mewar royal family's history, including paintings of important battles, murals of the Maharana's tiger hunts, and delicate mosaics that catch the light coming in through arched windows. It took us forever to walk through the palace, and in each courtyard and preserved bedroom there was something so captivating and regal it really all took our breath away. One of my favourites was the colourful room of a 16 year-old princess who in the late 1600s committed suicide after discovering that her two rival suitors from Jaipur and Jodhpur were about to declare war over her hand. Her walls were covered in thousands of painted mirror tiles and from the center of the ceiling a cushioned red swing hung down. 

We were just buying tickets outside the museum for a scenic boat ride of Lake Pichola when a small Indian guy approached us and said he was with a crew that was filming a commercial and they needed some white women to shoot playing tug of war against a group of Indian ladies. The man had hardly got his words out before Charley said, "She'll do it!" and pushed me forward. So there I was, inside the City Palace, filming a promo video for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. There was a bunch of us white girls - all Europeans, French and Spanish mostly, all a bit older and all catting to each other (they wouldn't make conversation with the likes of us teenage folk and were too busy parodying American accents to do so anyway). Everybody's boyfriends were gathered on the side snapping embarrassing photos, mine included. One lone model ("Francesca") stood amongst us holding the rope. For some reason wardrobe had dressed her in a beige sort of skirt suit while we were all looking trashy in our Indian touristy clothes. Everybody was fussing over her saying "Farncesca? Where's Francesca?" The director was exactly what you'd expect a sleazy director to be like, calling everyone dudes and trying to quote the Big Lebowski and winking all over the place, but he was fun. Somehow I ended up in front of Francesca so that when the shot was tightened I had to stay on to keep the same surroundings. We were still pretending to play tug of war in the shot but I guess waify Franny wasn't putting enough vigour into it. The director said "Do it like her!" and pointed somewhere in my direction, and from behind me I heard a tiny voice say, "But you guys haven't fed me in like 3 days..." She was nice, though. She's lived here for five years between Goa and Mumbai. I told her I lived in Delhi as a student and she looked at me with a truly sympathetic expression. Guess I'm not the only one who feels sorry for me.

In the end Charley and I got on our boat ride. We saw the Jag Niwas and Jag Mandir islands on the lake and joked a lot about me being a movie star. Next time he's taking a 15% commission. When we got back to the hotel Octopussy was playing in the lobby. It's another one of Udaipur's claims to fame, having been filmed partially inside the City Palace and on the streets of the city. I never knew how ridiculous Bond used to be with Roger Moore as its star - he actually pops a wheelie while driving an auto rickshaw, then drives up a ramp and jumps over a camel. We got the feeling that it wouldn't be the last time we'd see the film in the city, what with the many cafes and restaurants advertising nightly showings of it at 7pm. The locals must be so sick of it!

On Saturday we met a man called Mohammed who was very old and could hardly speak any English but who asked us to sit with him for a while as he shared his unique postcard collection from tourists around the world who had met him once in Udaipur, just like us. We promised to send him his first card from San Francisco to round out the collection. We also toured the Bagore-ki-Haveli, an 18th C noble home right on the banks of Lake Pichola. It's a museum now and has a fascinating collection of turbans including the world's largest one, which sits in a six ft squared glass case. Somewhere around midday as we walked around we met a strange old man that everybody told us had the best singing voice in India. I told him to sing for us, but all we got was a croaky version of Jingle Bells that consisted of "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle jingle jingle..." over and over, followed by some weird amateur beatboxing. Then he told us he had a cameo in Octopussy as a rickshaw driver and made me give him my only pen. Honestly, didn't he know I was a local celebreity now too? In the afternoon Charley and I both took lessons in the Gangour Ghat area of town. Mine was a painting lesson (Udaipur is renowned for its miniature painting on silk and camel bone) with a man who had the longest and most bizarre ear hair I've ever seen. Charley's was a tabla lesson with an artistically-tempered musician called Krishna. After a swim in our rooftop pool (hehe) we returned to the Bagore-ki-Haveli to watch a show of traditional Rajasthani dances. The evening entertainment concluded with one of the oldest performers dancing with an amazing ten terra cotta pots on her head. After the show, the streets were lit up and filled with people, elephants, and camels parading and dancing to celebrate the first night of Navaratri - a nine day festival that pays homage to the goddess Durga. We joined in and learned how to dance with sticks like all the little children. Feeling like we were floating with elation, we watched Octopussy in our lobby late into the night and laughed again at how ridiculous Bond was pre-Daniel Craig. 

Sunday was our last full day in Udaipur. We explored, ate, swam, worshipped at the 400 yr old Jagdish Mandir, learnt more about the techniques of miniature painting at an old art school haveli, and at the end of the day watched the sun set from the top of a mountain reached only by gondola ride. I miss Udaipur and its scenery, its relaxed vibes and people. The city was so clean and eco-friendly, with publications everywhere describing its efforts to become a self sustainable environment. It's also a rare comfort to stay in a touristy spot and not feel like people are out to cheat you 24/7. Instead, they welcomed us with open arms - stopped us in the street just to chat, danced with us, laughed with us (or at us, we wouldn't have cared). A little boy took my camera on Sunday night during the festival celebrations and took about a hundred pictures. He and his gang were so pleased with themselves whenever the pictures they took popped back up on the display screen. It makes me happy to look back and see it all from his point of view - he'd come within 6 inches of your face to take a portrait!

But thinking back on it, it can't just have been the location and the people who put me in such a good mood. Travelling is also about the people you share the experience of a unique place like Udaipur with. With Charley I know I can laugh, smile, complain, and just be back to the normal self that he reminds me of, and it makes me happy just to see in him the relief of finding a place in India that's pretty much the opposite of Delhi. If only everyday could be like those charming three days in Udaipur... but then again, I tell myself, I need something more exciting than that. And so we departed from our Eastern Venice and hop onto a plane bound for Chennai, the armpit of Tamil Nadu, where the real adventure of our vacation begins.

The Golden Triangle Part II

On the route from Jaipur to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, we stopped at another fort (times must have been bad for all these Mughal emperors to need so much fortification, I think). The name of the ancient mini-city was Fatehpur Sikri, "Victory City," so called because it was built in celebration of Akbaar's defeat of the Gujarat empire. Looking back on it, even though the day was blisteringly hot and my insides were tormenting me with gastroenteritis, Fatehpur Sikri had just the sense of humour and charm to lift my mediocre spirits that up to then were in danger of suffocation by cynicism.

The emperor, grandfather of Shah Jahan (who commissioned the Taj) seemed to me like a man with his priorities in order. Every little courtyard of the palace at Fatehpur was designed for his own satisfaction - first we walked into a beautiful open garden, encircled by a sandstone colonnade. Here, crowds would gather to witness a spectacle at the centre of the courtyard; one small sandstone disc is embedded alone amongst an expanse of lawn, and it is on this disc that one of the king's two special elephants would perform executions. It was kept angry and wild only by massive amounts of alcohol, and when required to would raise one foot above the poor victim's head, then press it down until its sole reached that sandstone disc. Pretty grizzly, but an inventive execution I must say. The emperor's other special elephant was trained to dance. Dancing and executions - what other entertainment could a king need? As it turns out, he was also fond of using his servants as human-sized game pieces in a large-scale version of Parcheesi, but our guide insisted that it was all in good fun and any indentured slaves won by competitors would have to be returned at the end of the game. There was also a shady courtyard in the palace where the king, along with his three main wives, a couple of hundred more wives, and his many many consorts, liked to play Blind Man's Bluff to pass the time, and an elevated, breezy area to lie around in when the weather got too hot.

And to top it all off, the Emperor was so laid back as to be an equal opportunity husband, marrying not only his primary Muslim wife, but a Hindu and a Portuguese Catholic from Goa as well. Each had her own section of the palace that architecturally resembled her religious and geographic background, too, giving Fatehpur Sikri an ancient theme-park ambience - in one corner we have mini-Islamabad, to the South the ornately carved Little Hindustan, and on your left a bit of colonial splendour in Vasco-de-Gama-ville!

Fatehpur also had its own mosque nearby to the palace. I should not really blame the guide for what happened next, he did warn us there would be a lot of people in the masjid, but he didn't really help things either. Walking the 500m up to the entrance we were swarmed by the usual peddlers, beggars, and goats. But it didn't stop there - inside the large grounds of the mosque scores of men still came at us, pushing each of us to buy their lapis lazuli jewellery boxes and marble chess boards. I refused, partly from annoyance, but partly also on the moral grounds that they could be permitted to do such a thing inside a mosque. Unfortunately our own tour guide only added to the pressure, probably because he'd been promised some sort of commission. A group of beggar kids hung on our heels. Next thing I knew, a tiny old man was chasing them away with a giant staff, banging it threateningly on the floor. He looked about 80, but could still run and shout his heart out. When he walked back up to the group of us laughing to ourselves at what we'd just witnessed, he held out his hand and said, "Sir, Madam, I your bodyguard, give as you like..." with a gap-toothed grin. Some things never change. I wish for your sake that I could write more about the architecture of the mosque, or something historically significant, but this is the only lasting impression that Fatehpur Sikri left on me myself.

After lunch we all hopped back onto the bus and got ready for the focal point of our weekend trip. We were on our way to see the Taj Mahal! Along the route, our tour guide filled us in on the background story of the monument. Maybe you know it already, it's very romantic. Emperor Shah Jahan's favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, dies giving birth to their fourteenth child together. Shah Jahan is devastated, and decides to construct a resting place for her more beautiful than any other building in the empire. He hires thousands of artisans, architects, stone-cutters, he blasts away entire mountainsides for their pure white marble and has it all carried back to Agra on the backs of hundreds of elephants. It takes years, but in the end the tomb overlooking the Yamuna is finished, called Mumtaz Mahal, known today as the Taj Mahal, wonder of the world.

As we walked through the main entrance gate to the Taj, which is gorgeous in itself and exquisitely inlaid with gold Arabic calligraphy and marble panels, I saw over a mass of heads a small doorway leading towards a bright white building in the distance. The foyer of the gateway was pitch black set against its window view of the Taj, and each step through it slowly built up in me an agitation to get a glimpse of it at last, pushing my way through the many people thinking exactly the same thing, cramming ourselves through the little archway until...

I made it through, and on the other side, how can I even describe it? It's massive, much larger than I expected, and such a pure pure white it's almost like a mirror to the afternoon sun. I saw the tomb straight ahead of me, but even before that there was so much other beauty - four large, lush gardens, streams and fountains bisecting the lawns and leading up to the famous Princess Diana bench, in the very far distance the Yamuna river rushing by, and just before it two buildings symmetrically aligned with the mahal, one a mosque facing mecca and the other a guest house. It was all so gorgeous and serene, despite the many spectators. Everybody was just trying to soak the image in, I think, taking mental photographs as well as literal ones. Me, I went snap happy, and for once I felt that by looking through the lens I was enriching my experience of the place. I caught pictures not only of the beautiful white tomb, but entire scenes of families both new fashioned and old. Geriatrics in their sarees and kurta pajama, hobbling about and looking so happy to have seen such a sight in their already very full lifetimes. Newlyweds walking around together, all shy and not yet accustomed to holding hands. Little kids just being kids, probably not realizing the immensity of the backdrop behind them as they smiled for their parents in choreographed family photos. I stayed for hours just walking off on my own, once through the tomb itself, but mostly just around the gardens and up on the white marble plinth. When the sun began to set it cast a beautiful yellow glow upon the dome of the tomb. We stayed just until the sky turned indigo blue and the Taj Mahal, completely unlit, shone white in the growing darkness, and then it was time to go. 

I know I haven't done it much justice, and neither will any picture. I went into the Taj Mahal expecting to be disappointed, considering its huge reputation. Being one of the seven wonders of the world it has a lot to live up to, but take my word for it, it definitely does not let you down. I think I saw a little bit of paradise that day, and I saw the effect it had on all of us who poured back out through the narrow entry gate, floating happily along and smiling at the men running alongside us peddling their mini Taj mahals, their mini elephants, their lapis lazuli jewellery boxes. And I was feeling fine again.

The Golden Triangle Part I

I've postponed writing an entry about my travels to Jaipur and Agra from a couple of weeks ago for about as long as I can. It's got to the point where my mother actually harasses me via Facebook to get off my lazy arse and back to work ("Come on, Jessie!"). The problem is, I just can't face the thought of describing all of the monuments I saw, especially the Taj Mahal, to anyone who has never seen them before. You might be wanting a detailed account of what they all looked like close-up, or how I felt being there, so let me tell you now, you'll probably be disappointed. I'll never be able to even touch on what it's really like. You see, we all have the picture of some of these amazing buildings in our heads or in the pages of geography books. We can wikipedia the Amber Fort and probably learn more information about it that an Indian tour guide can supply (such has been my case, at least). But when it comes to the actual experience of going to such historic sites, there's so much more to it than I feel I can describe. And to be totally honest, I worry that perhaps I didn't experience it myself at all. Was I present enough? Was I taking too many pictures and not just enjoying the moment? Was I worrying too much thinking about whether I was enjoying the moment or not? I've also become so accustomed to budget travelling around the country - my standard of comfort having dropped considerably to the point where I'm just pleased to sleep on a mattress without too many bed bugs - that spending three nights in five star hotels and getting around by an AC bus with the word TOURIST covering most of its front window makes me think that I didn't really see Agra and Jaipur at all. I'm sort of figuring that out, so maybe you can decide for yourself and tell me - am I in the real India anymore?

"Oh my god," my friend Komal spins around from looking out our hotel room window, "we have a POOL."

"Where are we?" I joke, bouncing on a thick, springy mattress. Just then the lights and the AC cut out. Reassurance that we were still in the country, thank god. 

Jaipur was the name of the place. It was all part of our EAP organized "Golden Triangle" trip, in which we would travel between the old Mughal empire cities of Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra attempting, it would seem, to break the world record for the number of forts visited in one weekend.

Because we are all late, disorganized and disappointing individuals, we delayed our arrival so much on Friday that we had to postpone seeing Jaipur's City Palace until the next day and Viji Uncle, our saintly director, unleashed us into the Old City for some shopping. The Old City of Jaipur is the area that has existed since the rule of emperor Sawai Jai Singh II about four hundred years ago and was the only planned city in India at the time. It is also referred to as the Pink City, so called because about a hundred and fifty years back the Maharaja decreed that every building and facade should be painted pink, the colour of friendship, in honour of the Prince of Wales' visit. 

As we left our bus and walked down the promenade of Johari Bazaar, beside the City Palace, I knew I was going to enjoy Jaipur. The street was a unique but lovely hue - I would call it terra-cotta salmon if I was employed as one of those lucky people who thinks up names of paint colours for a living. The shops themselves all seemed very old, and I could imagine each shopkeeper's ancestors selling precisely the same wares on this street hundreds of years ago, where I encountered infamous Rajasthani handicrafts - shoes, sarees, cholis, angarkhas, little marionettes and huge tapestries. I was in shop-aholics' heaven, hardly even bothered by the pesky shopkeepers who pulled me this way and that, saying, "Excuse me madam, your friend, she is calling for you, you come my shop..."

I saw my first snake charmers. I touched one of the fanned out cobras. I bargained with a sadhu for a turquoise ring, then faced the curses of him and his posse for changing my mind and walking off without buying it. I held a little street girl's hand as I walked and played tickle monster with her friends, and then I left it all, climbed back onto the bus with its magical powers of transporting us worlds away, to a five star hotel room, and a hot bath, and a pile of very large, very soft pillows, and BBC on the telly.

By the next morning that upset stomach I'd been pushing through had become a full on gastrointestinal disaster. Maybe the sadhu's curses really did work. But I refused to let crippling stomach pains stand in my way. That day we'd be doing the one thing I'd been dreaming of ever since I applied to study in India. We'd be riding elephants. Amber Fort, or rather the heavily fortified and beautiful Amber Palace, was where we'd be. The elephants were just lovely, with brightly painted trunks and long-lashed, sweet eyes. They carried us two-a-piece up the steep path to the palace courtyard, high up enough for us to see Jaipur in all its antique pink splendour below. We were tossed from side to side in the basket type seat on the elephant's back. It had us laughing all the way. I took rude pictures of elephant excrement to satisfy my toilet humour. We giggled at the surprising amount of soft hairs all over the top of their heads. I saw a picture of some tourists looking quite the same in the paper the next morning, posted above a story that followed the recent protests in Jaipur calling for better treatment of the overworked Amber Fort elephants. I had no idea. How much I missed, I thought, how much I got wrong when I looked into that elephant's sweet eyes.

But the palace itself was not something I would take back. It was beautiful. In one hall the walls were inlaid with mosaic mirror tiles, and I overheard someone nearby remark that it had been perfectly designed so that one candle was all it took to light up the whole, huge room. I got lost in a series of dark staircases that interconnected each little apartment of the palace, all of them without doors or signs telling me not to cross a certain point, so that I had the complete liberty to roam freely and imagine what it would have been like to live in the court when Amber was alive and bustling, maybe looking out of one of the latticed windows and seeing the gardens or listening for the distant sounds of elephants in happier times.

On the way down to the bus, just as on the ride up with the elephants we all had to fight off the hordes of peddlers trying to make us buy anything and everything; puppets, miniature marble elephants, turbans, chess boards, memory cards, batteries. A man took my photo and insisted that I buy the copy he had already printed out. So I took his picture and offered him a special price myself, "50 rupees only, 10% discount just for you!" Cue laugh track from friends. Isn't desperation just hilarious? An old woman put a marigold garland round my neck. "Inam," gift, she says. I gave her ten rupees and got back on my magic bus.

In the afternoon we toured the City Palace. Just outside it, on the street opposite Johari Bazaar and the Bada Chaupar (Big Square), was the Hawa Mahal, or Palace of Winds. Looking at it face on it seems like nothing more than a very tall building front almost entirely made up of windows. Except that they were designed Mughal style - one can see out but not in. One of the emperors of Jaipur had it built so that his wives and consorts could still feel like a part of the city life even though, like all other women at that time, they were not allowed outside. Could window shopping be any more literal than that? As the courtiers sat anonymously, gazing across at the rows and rows of brightly-coloured bangle and juttai stores they could not enter. It's worse than torture!

The current royal family of Jaipur, though they retain no power, still lives in the City Palace. Most of it, though, has been converted into museum galleries. We walked past two enormous, gilded doors. Two flags flying means the maharaja is home. But I remember finding it amazing how bleak the outer courtyard to the palace was. Beggar families had set up shacks. The little children I had played with the day before were hanging about, as well as some new faces too, all walking towards the people stepping off the TOURIST bus with hands outstretched. Everybody looks old, no matter what age. Cows and monkeys, starved looking horses and dogs all claimed the courtyard too. The flags may have been up but the presence of royalty so near to so much poverty seemed pretty ludicrous to me at the time.

I toured the textile gallery. Saw pictures of the emperor from some time around the twenties in full polo regalia, hair oiled back and holding up a trophy. Saw the clothes of one of his more lascivious ancestors, the enormous angarkha of Ram Singh who had three wives, three hundred and one consorts, and weighed about five hundred pounds. Toured the armoury. Saw a 12ft rifle. Saw a "knife gun." Saw so many guns that the curator must have run out of ideas what to do with them all and had taken to rearranging them in the letters of the alphabet around the gallery walls. On my way out about a hundred more little pistols wished me farewell from where they hung above the doorway spelling, "GOODBYE."

The rains caught us outside the armoury. A nearby troupe began to bang on their tablas and harmonium, so we danced in the puddles, much to their amusement. I walked off to another courtyard and stood in front of the palace's famous Peacock Gates - one peacock for every season. I faced the Monsoon Gate, Varsha in Hindi, which was a rich green and gold and was the only passageway without a door. The monsoon in real life was still chucking it down around me, making Jaipur rich and green too. 

I know at some points in this entry my writing has rung out with bitterness, but as I wrote in the beginning, I'm still figuring some of this stuff out. So many people in my group have mentioned their desire to see the real India, and I always thought at those times, "but we are. We're here, this is it." I am not an idealistic hippy who came to the East for tranquil meditation sessions. I do not mind putting up in a large, polluted metropolis instead of a secluded mountain village or a remote ashraam. But I just cannot help but feel embittered now even when I do see people in real need asking me for alms. This weekend was just the worst for that - so many making me feel so guilty for passing up on kitsch souvenirs I neither need nor want. So you see, a little cynicism is necessary just to protect me from my own judgmental self, from my own guiltiness. "You can give more," I think sometimes, when I see little children carrying babies. But it would never end, enough will never be enough.

I'm reaching the point where I almost feel I've given India all I can give.

Into the Sunderban

It's five-thirty in the morning and we've been snugly packed into the back of a jeep that's making its way out of the city, which is still asleep, and into the Sunderban. Our tour guide Mowgli is in the front passenger seat. He is an excitable twenty-two year-old with skinny legs but the hint of a pot belly and long, highlighted hair. He likes pop music. He points to Calcutta on the left as we pass it by, notes the sun coming up over the mountains. But actually they are not real mountains, he says, they're just mounds of rubbish that people have burrowed into for shelter. Then he shrugs his shoulders and turns up the synchro-pop music on the radio. 

For three hours, the equivalent of about fifty renditions of Mowgli's favourite song, "Lollipop Lageli," we pass by one small village after another. Little children run after the car and curious elders pop their heads out of huts to have a look at the white people passing by. From the window I have a streaming, serene view of endless palm trees and water buffalo lazing in balmy ponds. The world is greener and more beautiful the deeper we go.

And I guess inside the car the atmosphere is pretty green, too, as Mowgli rolls his first of several hash beedis at 7am on the underside of a CD. He smiles a goofy grin and shouts over the music, "I just love to smoke. I only smoke since six months, but I love it. You know, some people when they smoke it make them psychotic, but me, I only eat like psychotic after smoke." Then he giggles a little boyish chuckle and bobs his head to the techno beat. After a bit we stop the car so that he can go "pee pee." I can't help but feel that we've been stuck with the tour company owner's half-retarded younger brother, which is pretty much the case here.

The further we get the more it seems like we're driving into the Bay of Bengal itself. The road increasingly gives way to marshlands on either side until we are speeding down a highway only as wide as the jeep itself. Little houses perch precariously on stilts in the water. I swear I see them sway a little in the breeze as we whiz by. At last we reach as far as we can go by car, so we hop into a tiny motorboat overloaded with villagers and head off to the next island. 

What a lovely change it is from the city when we get there. No electricity, no cars, no pesky peddlers. We hop onto the back of these bicycle carts called machine guns, which are much more pleasant than their name suggests, and watch miles and miles of more marshy farmlands roll by. Children are swimming in their murky pools, watching us with astonished smiles and yelling "Tata!" as we pass. The people obviously don't have much but they are carefree and friendly. There must be something in all this water. 

At last we pull up in front of a random old house that has been converted into a hotel. It has a path up to its front gate and another out its back. When we get to the other side I see the view that had been blocked by the rows of village huts on my way over, and it is exquisite. A narrow lane of dried mud takes us through an alley of twisted mangroves, with swamp on either side, out to the jetty of an old little tugboat and a deep, wide river. The opposite bank is nothing but gorgeous, untouched forest that seems to stretch on forever. Brimming with happiness and excitement, I jump aboard the deck of our peeling voyager and we chug our way over to the Tiger Reserve. 

That's where we pick up our real guide, a small and sweet old man who has lived on the island we just left all of his life. Free of his charges, Mowgli wastes no time in lighting up and then having a snooze on the deck. Meanwhile, we learn a little about the Sunderban wildlife and the Reserve's conservation efforts. The entire delta is made up of 102 islands. 48 of these are entirely uninhabited by people and protected as government property. Within this, the main species you'll find are Spotted Deer, several varieties of turtle, Monitor Lizards, Salt Water Crocodiles, and the Bengal Tiger. The area has the largest tiger population in the country and the Reserve has worked hard over the past few years to get its numbers back on the rise after a bit of a sharp decline. A fence has been put up along the stretch of islands that separates the side inhabited by people from the side that is not, as even though the water between the two is wide and teeming with crocs, tigers are still likely to swim across, attack villagers, and be killed.

Our little Bengali guide takes us up to the watch tower where we are struck by the awesome view before us - nature left absolutely to its own devices. Unfortunately, not much really happens in nature, and even in a setting so beautiful waiting for the tide to go down is like watching paint dry. Very soon our poor little jungle guide has five sleepy Californian kids passed out on the floor of his watch tower. Once he wakes us up whispering, "Please look!" and I see a long snake, a cobra, skimming along the surface of the water. He must've seen it a million times before but the sight makes him so happy, so I watch for a bit and say, "Cool," then fall right back into my heat-induced sleep.

With the water level a little lower, we can take the boat a bit deeper into the forest and hopefully spot some animals as they come out to drink. For a while though all there is to see is a few Spotted Deer, for whom Mowgli wakes up and bestows a bit of his genius wit by pointing and calling out, "Tiger food!" They soon scatter, ad Mowgli decides it's time for lunch. After another smoke, of course.

I really don't know why we ever switched to cutlery in the West. Eating Indian food with your hands is so much more satisfying, especially when you're dangling your legs off the side of a boat churning down the waterways of a mangrove forest. What is not pleasant is when thirty minutes after your meal you hear a splashing sound on the deck behind you and turn about to see the driver, still clutching the wheel, bent over and releasing the contents you yourself are still digesting onto the ground by your feet. Mowgli starts to giggle, "I ask him if he smoke the marijuana, he says yes. I ask him if he wanna smoke, he says yes. And now... Oh! (fades into Bengali and laughs hysterically)." At least yellow dal looks the same coming out as it does going in...

The end of our day out in the jungle is approaching. The only logical thing left to do at the end of a day like this is to get covered in mud. So we pull up to an empty bank and prepare for our "spa treatment." I would liken slipping off the prow into the Sunderban mud to falling into a giant vat of silly putty. I am instantly plunged up to my thighs in the slimy stuff, and whenever any one of us tries to lift a leg it has the hilarious effect not unlike, excuse language, the sound of a wet and juicy fart, which sends us all into uncontrollable fits of giggles and has us falling over ourselves in the mud. I feel little things moving between my toes. "Watch out for crabs," Mowgli calls out. I scream, then embarrass myself further by attempting to run through the mud to some sort of non-existent safe zone. And now I am committed - hopelessly stuck in the middle of the mangroves and covered in shit. "Now imagine if a tiger was standing right there," Mowgli grins at me stupidly, "What would you do?"

We all squelch about for a little longer, climb the trees (badly) next to a few huge Fiddler crabs, then head back to the open bank. Up to this point I've surprisingly kept my upper half pretty mud free and I'm taking pictures with my camera, but it is now that the battle begins.

From my left periphery I catch a glimpse of a perfectly aimed meteoroid of mud mid-orbit, spiraling towards me. It is too late to avoid it, and soon I am hit with a death blow to the chest. Mid-gasp, another whopper comes sailing through the sky, then another and another. With every one of Mowgli's attacks I sink deeper into the putty beneath me. He must really have it in for me. "Go on!" I tell my comrades, "Save yourselves!" But just then I feel a spark of courage rising up within me, I muster the strength to free my poor legs from their buttock-high encasement, I yell in my best Braveheart impression, "I have the will to LIVE!" Then I am blind-sided to the side of the head by a final cannonball of mud. I sink back silently into the squelchiness, dejected. Then I fling a meager little shot, a piddly thing, that lands in Mowgli's hair. He spins around and says quite seriously, "Hey, not my face OK?"

I accept my defeat and we all wash off in the river. The boat is anchored a bit of a distance off shore now, and we're going to have to swim to it. "Just watch out for crocodiles," Mowgli warns.

Fantastic.

"But Mowgli, what is the likelihood that there are crocs nearby us right now?" I ask, a tiny bit worried.

"What does this mean?"

"Er, are there crocodiles near us right now?"

"Oh yes."

"Er, are you sure?" Getting very nervous now.

"Definitely." Then just for good measure he tosses in, "These are the most dangerous crocodiles in the world. Salt Water Crocodiles."

"Oh. Great." He's such a comfort, that Mowgli.

But of course we all make it back to the boat, limbs and all, and we live to see the extraordinary beauty of a Sunderban sunset. I haven't mentioned the meaning of the name. In Hindi it is "beautiful forest," and it's true. In fact, it's so beautiful that not even spending the day with the half-retarded younger brother of a tour company owner could ruin it, even if he does blast "Lollipop Lageli" a good fifty more times on the ride back home.