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.

Calcutta

It all began with one little toe.

There is a traditional story that I read just before I arrived in the city. Legend has it that the Hindu god Shiva, in a fury of grief at the death of his beloved wife Sati, slung her body on his shoulders and began to walk out across the land, dancing the terrible 'tandava nritya' (the dance of death) so that he destroyed everything in his path. To stop the carnage, Vishnu, on behalf of the other frightened deities, flung his magic chakra at Sati's body, slashing it into dismembered pieces that scattered across the earth. The spot where Sati's little toe fell was named Kalighat, the place of Kali (who was an incarnation of Sati). Kalighat became Kolkata, and Kolkata, in the time of the British Raj, became Calcutta.

As I write this on my long train journey back to Delhi and think back on the numerous wonders I've seen in the city over the last few days, I find it hard to imagine that enough magic could be contained in just one pinky toe to inspire a place so vivid and complex as Calcutta. From the modern spectacles like Howrah Bridge and the thoroughly metropolitan Park St, to the remnants of the colonial empire at BBD Bagh, not excluding the natural settings of the Hooghly River and the nearby Sunderban jungle, or the inescapable sadness of its many slums - Calcutta is a unique city rife with dichotomies that would turn most other places on their heads. And yet, everything seems to come together, like each facet is a crucial cog in the machinery that makes this capital tick. It's difficult to quite put it all into words, but maybe that's why it has always needed its own special story, otherwise it would be impossible to explain it all.

We arrived on a Thursday a mere five hours later than scheduled. All I can say about that is thank God the Indian Railway System seems to have an inexhaustible supply of fresh chai, otherwise we'd never get through the frustrations of a 23 hour train ride. That, and the view from the exit of Sealdah Station, seemed to promise me that Calcutta would not let me down. Everywhere there were these iconic bright yellow taxis and decaying buildings that had been reclaimed by unruly old trees. In fact, it all just looked a little old, but still colourful, as though when the British left they waved goodbye to a youthful girl all dressed up for a party, and now, sixty years later, she's still there, deeply wrinkled but with all the make-up still on.

Found a cheap place to stay (Hotel Shams - not an encouraging name for an Indian hostel but not bad), went to a biryani restaurant, got lost around New Market - we didn't do much the first night because the next morning was an early start. When it rolled around I woke up to a great view outside - a graffiti mural of Ganesh the elephant god on an opposite building, and just down the street a chai wala pouring out some of his magic potion into take-out terracotta mugs (only 5R - at least I have a cheap addiction). Our plan of action was to head across the river to the Botanical Gardens, then pop over to BBD Bagh, see the Kali Temple at Kalighat and lastly the Victoria Memorial lit up at night on our way home. 

The ferry ride across the Hooghly was ridiculously cheap, about 3 rupees, and gave us a great view of the Calcutta skyline. The Howrah Bridge also towered above us, massive and skeletal. I would describe the river itself as something close to the Thames about a century back, only maybe a bit smellier. And with people bathing in it along its many ghats. It had an oily sheen on its surface and the whole thing made me pray that our tiny old ferry boat still had enough life in it to make it to the opposite shore. Fast forward to the Botanical Gardends itself; not sure what you can really write about a Botanical Gardens to make it seem that interesting. The world's oldest Banyan tree is there. It's 200 years old and its roots span sixty metres across so that it looks like an orchard but in fact is just one giant tree. Maybe a better writer would make a good metaphor about unity or humanity from this, but I'd rather skip ahead to my favourite setting in Calcutta, back on the opposite shore - BBD Bagh.

It's named after the three initials of the men who attempted to assassinate the former British governor of West Bengal in Victorian times, which is ironic because its entirely made up of colonial architecture and former government buildings from the Raj era. My favourite was the old headquarters of the East India Trading Company. It was huge, and to look at it straight on we had to stand across a little lake. Funny how the pictures in my guide book never seem to include the many locals who consider any body of water a public bathing area, but I think it only enriches the scene. It's just really interesting to see such an old part of the city, I mean, not just old, but from a different era, juxtaposed with modern India. Part of me thinks that these European monuments don't belong there, but then I see how everybody has adapted to their presence - how fruit sellers chop up coconuts on the steps to the old Post Office, or how angry taxi drivers gamble behind the Royal Insurance Building - eventually it all fits together, but only because it exists in Calcutta.

Ate the best lacha parantha of my life in the taxi ride to Kali Temple in the mid-afternoon. Street food, I love you too too much. The temple is located right behind Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying and Destitute. For some reason my DK guide book made this out to be a nice spot to visit, but I thoroughly regret walking inside. Yes, her grave is in the lobby, but it's also about five feet away from a large open room stacked with completely occupied beds of dying people being attended to by hurried nuns. I felt like a complete imposition, not to mention really embarrassed that I had entered as a tourist, not a volunteer, and had turned a hospice into an attraction. Bad idea Dorling Kindersley. But the Kali Temple was interesting - different from most Hindu temples in the village-like atmosphere in its courtyard where 60 goats are sacrificed each morning and fed to the poor, and also in the amazing shrine to Kali with her protruding solid gold tongue and fearsome, bulging eyes. And yet, as usual, similar to just about every other Hindu temple in the way we are always pestered, as tourists, to donate obscene amounts of money when we give puja and can never avoid a scene by refusing to do so. It's bittersweet. Eventually I had to promise the priest that once Kali had delivered me a good marriage, many babies, and great fortune, I would return to the temple with all of these things in tow and repay her. Fingers crossed!

Saw Victoria Memorial on the way home just after the sun had set, all lit up, looking very beautiful and once again much too English (there's even a topiary gardens on the grounds). Then a man with two monkeys on leashes walked up to me and asked me if I wished to see them dance - how could I really ever forget where I was? And what were the old colonists thinking, trying to make the city so continental? All I can say is that they totally underestimated the formidability of Indian culture. Present it with any morsel of foreign ways and you'll soon find it eaten alive; Hinduism absorbed Buddhism, and Calcutta most definitely survived its strange makeover into a pseudo-British capital by emerging only more interesting on the other side. 

But what did I really know about the city anyway? Then that night we suddenly had the thought that maybe it could be best understood by seeing what it might've been like had history played out differently. We would go to the jungle. I know, how Kipling-esque of us, and just after I've spouted off about the colonialist attitude of changing what might've been better if left untouched. But our guide's name was Mowgli, it was too fated to resist. And besides, I thought that perhaps, at the end of the day, we would only be paying a tribute to the one thing that set Calcutta apart from its Sunderban roots all those many centuries ago:

one little pinky toe.

Still to come... Into the Sunderbans

An All Too Familiar Feeling:

My brain is 75% Mojito, 25% Long Island Iced Tea. Forming coherent sentences is no longer a promise due to head's present state of liquidization. Apologies.

Radical events transpired last night. I could excuse them by hiding behind my journalistic desires to cover all aspects of Delhi life, but that would be a lie. Wearing tight white jeans and hitting the bars is not technically on my Cultural Anthropologist agenda...

Went to a nightclub in South Delhi called Urban Pindh, meaning urban village, which is a fitting description for  what Delhi is itself; a throbbing, bustling, metropolitan hub with backwards ways and even more backwards people. Case in point: strange Indian men you meet at clubs. On more than one occasion I found myself locked into a sort of dance-off from which I could not escape (which is funny because, as my sister will happily tell you, I'm crap at dancing). I mean, at least they're not gropey or all about grinding to sexist rap lyrics, it's just interesting that the national love of singing and dancing has been taken to the competitive level by ordinary clubbers. And whenever the fiery determinism in their eyes to top John Travolta's moves in Saturday Night Fever would die down for a second, I'd hear a shout above the din of bangra/Bollywood/house music in strained English, like, "YOUR COUNTRY NAME?" or, "OH, I SEE YOU MUST GO GYM."

I suppose it wouldn't all have been such an odd night, except for this sneaking suspicion I have that we're now all tied to the Delhi Mafia. At some point in the night, somebody made friends with the bouncers, three gorilla-like men with bandy legs, gigantic torsos and unbuttoned hairy chests. Very Euro-trash chic. Anyway, they introduced us to who I think might be the kingpin of Delhi's entire underworld club scene - a Don-like figure who requests we all call him "Big Brother." Conversations took place and acquaintances were made, and now we're all invited to go to Kashmir with him next weekend, free of charge. Mmmm, no thanks. And then there was the incident of a man on the street who had to be dealt with, for a reason I probably don't want to know, and how the bouncers returned with what looked like blood on their much-too-tight shirts, and then it was time to go...

Which brings me to this morning, or rather afternoon, state of paralysis, probably frightening you all half to death and wishing for my usual hangover cure (sausage egg mcmuffin and a raspberry mocha frappucino please!). But there's nothing like shocking cultural experiences to teach you something about living in a foreign city. And I've learned my lesson - I think I'll stick to my own little urban village for a while. Besides, if The Godfather taught me anything, I feel like keeping a low profile from now on would be a good idea...