Category Archives: Rajasthan

The desert state of India bordering Pakistan to the west. The poorest of India’s states and famed for the fabulous palaces of the Maharajahs.

India day 13 – Ajmer to Pushkar, Rajasthan

Pushkar is 30 minutes drive from < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Ajmer, but the hotel wants 500 rupees to arrange a taxi to take us there.  We already know that the going rate is 250 rupees since that’s what we were quoted at the station when we arrived in Ajmer yesterday.  It’s also the price quoted on the website of the hotel in Pushkar where we will be staying.  We’ll try our luck at the station taxi rank.  < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

First though we intend to get some breakfast and visit the Dargar Masjid.   We have breakfast in the Madeena Hotel  opposite the station.  Another Lonely Planet recommendation which turns out to be nothing as grand as a hotel, but a basic cafe popular with locals and charging local prices and specialising in a very thin, cooked –to-order roti.   It’s dirt cheap, dirt being the important word;  cleanliness not being a high priority and there are flies everywhere.  The washing up is done on the floor in a filthy alcove that can’t have been cleaned for many a year.  But, it’s recommended in Lonely Planet so it can’t be all bad – assuming of course they have ever sent someone to visit it.   The kitchen is open plan so at least we can see watch our meal being prepared and what we get is quite good and we survive the experience.

We get a pedal rickshaw to the Dargar rather than walk and it’s a good decision.  The mosque is situated in the midst of the old city and involves negotiating a maze of narrow twisting alleys and bazaars.  There is no way we would have found our way on foot, even with a map.  The alleys are heaving with people and amongst them a boy is herding a group of donkeys laden with bricks.  Some yards from the Mosque we have to dismount and walk the rest of the way as the alley becomes too narrow even for the pedal rickshaw.  Our rickshaw wallah takes it upon himself to act as our guide  and accompanies us round the mosque.  He speaks hardly any English but we get the general gist of the etiquette – where to leave our shoes, no cameras allowed and so on.  As we enter the mosque we become the subject of some excited discussion in Hindi which we can’t understand but which seems to be about the rickshaw wallah and who is going to guide us round.  The upshot of which is that we acquire another self-appointed companion with a little more English;  so we now have two people accompanying us.  

The Dargar Masjid is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in India and the number of worshippers in the outer courtyard is overwhelming.  It has the feel of a bazaar buzzing with activity and colour.   There are dozens of stalls selling trays of rose petals, incense, religious trinkets, food, offerings and such like.  People are milling around, sitting or lying on the floor chatting, playing music or just passing the time.  The scene is one of vivid fluttering saris, red petals strewn on the floor and air redolent with their sweet scent.   It’s like stepping into another world, a cleaner world of cool marble and fascinating sights and sounds. 

The Dargah is the site of the tomb of the sufi saint Khwaja Muin-ud-din-Chishti  and Muslims come here to pay their respects and to shower rose petals on the tomb.  The tiny, highy decorated mausoleum is hung with a deep blue and gold canopy and what space there is around the tomb itself is crammed to bursting with people shuffling round, pushing and shoving as they squeeze their way in bearing wicker trays of petals above their heads.  We let the crowd bear us along until we emerge through the exit on the other side of the tomb having been blessed by an imam on the way.  In another part of the mosque are two vast cauldrons, known as degs, for offering for the poor.

Built by Shah Jahan,  the open-sided, white marble prayer  hall faces  an inner courtyard and has an ornately decorated alcove pointing to Mecca.  It is a haven of peace from the hubbub in the rest of the mosque.

The Dargah has nine entrances and our guides lead us out still barefoot through another of these and into the  heaving bazaar to see the ruins of Adhai –din-ka-Jhonpra,  that was reputedly built  in two-and-half days in 1153.  Originally built as a Sanskrit college using the remains of Hindu and Jain temples,  it was later converted into a mosque by the addition of a seven arched facade carved with Arabic script.  It’s a rather grand structure with its carved pillars and towering arches.  Tossing a coin into a nook in the alcove inside the mosque is said to bring good luck, but seems more like a money making scheme as two boys change notes for coins and then collect all the coins that fall to the floor.

After collecting our shoes and our camera, the latter left  with a local shopkeeper outside the Dargar, our guides take us to view a gigantic ‘well’ which turns out to be a cavernous  cistern in the centre of the old town where monsoon rain water is collected.  As we walk back through the bazaar with its myriad stalls selling everything from glittering bangles to Indian sweets, we gather a train of young children and mothers with babies all wanting a few rupees and as we hand out a coins more children appear, constantly prodding and tapping our arms, tugging our clothes and repetitively pleading for money.  This is behaviour reserved solely for tourists;  Indians are rarely bothered in this way and if they are they give short shrift. 

We pay our self-appoint guide and take the rickshaw back to the railway station, stopping on the way to get a flat tyre pumped up.  We offer the rickshaw wallah 100 rupees – considerably more than the original fare, but he cheekily demands double.    He’s trying his luck and when we give him 150 he goes away with a big grin on his face.   At the station we pick up a taxi to Pushkar for 200 rupees and after picking up our luggage from the hotel we leave Ajmer and head for the hills.  Arriving in Pushkar there is a 15 rp entry tax for car and passengers. 

Pushkar is a small town of some 40,000;  more of a village than a town really and easily manageable on foot.  There is almost a complete absence of traffic, only the occasional moped, handcart or pedal rickshaw;  but mostly it’s only cows and people that make their way along the narrow streets.  The relative peace and quiet is a welcome relief from the normal chaos of Indian towns and cities.  Brahma was born in Pushkar and it is a holy place where pilgrims come to worship at one of the many temples (of which there are 1,000 apparently) and to bathe in Pushkar Lake.  It is also where Ghandhi’s  ashes are scattered.  The focal point is the lake in the centre of town with its 52 ghats – the steps which lead down to the lake for bathing.  Inevitably it’s heavily geared to tourists, although not unpleasantly so;  there are 400 hotels inconspicuously tucked away in the old buildings  and the bazaars that line the streets behind the ghats are a shopper’s paradise, selling local textiles, clothes, shoes, jewellery and other handicrafts.  It’s relatively clean too, and people seem to make an effort to sweep the dusty streets.  Much of the streets are unpaved or partly paved and it’s necessary to pick you way through squelchy mud when it rains.

The hotel turns out to be a real find and aptly named ‘Inn Seventh Heaven’.   It is a delightfully restored haveli, or traditional old house, with a central courtyard complete with fountain overlooked by  two galleries which give access to the rooms on the upper floors.  Marble floors, original doors,  (unglazed) windows and lots of other original features all add to its charm.  Our room opens off the first floor gallery and overlooks the dirt street at the front.  It’s traditionally furnished and has a huge king-size bed.  This is one that Lonely Planet got spot on.   There is a restaurant in the courtyard as well as a shop selling good quality, ethically produced clothes, bags, pashminas, bedspreads and cushion covers.  I could be tempted!

The weather seems much cooler here, which is a relief from the heat of the bigger cities.  There’s a little rain in the afternoon so we don’t venture out until around 4pm.  The streets may not have much traffic but there are plenty of cows wandering everywhere and children trailing westerners begging for food.  Sad to say, we’ve quickly become hardened to the beggars who are an almost continual presence and often continue to follow us around even after we’ve given them money.  We walk down onto the ghats to look at the lake only to discover that it is almost empty and well below the level of the steps.  Normally the monsoon rains would have filled the lake by this time of year, but because the rains are late the bed of the lake is exposed and the whole area looks rather forlorn.  It’s made even less attractive by the partial dredging of bottom of the lake which has left it looking a bit like a mud quarry.  All of which means the view from the ghats is rather disappointing.  There are cows wandering on the ghats and are likely to gently head butt you if you don’t get out of their way, as Andy discovers whilst stood with an Indian who has approached us for a chat. 

Being a holy place there are rules about acceptable dress which includes no exposed legs, shoulders or cleavage – although it’s OK to bear your midriff if you wear a sari.  Some Westerners don’t seem  to bother, either unaware and uncaring and the shops, rather confusingly, sell revealing clothes.   Much to Andy’s chagrin Pushkar is meat, egg, fish and alcohol free.  So for the duration of our stay Andy, who as anyone who knows him will be aware doesn’t dislikes vegetables with a passion ,  is on  a vegetarian diet.  Imagine that!

 

 

 

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India day 12 – Jaipur to Ajmer

The two hour train journey from Jaipur to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Ajmer gives us our first real look at the countryside of Rajasthan, the state that borders Pakistan to the west and the Punjab to the north.  It’s not lush or tropical as might be expected, but arid and scrubby with stunted trees and ploughed fields which seem to be mostly in between crops.  The landscape is mostly flat with a few hills in the distance.  Ajmer has a population about a fifth that of Jaipur and is a much more manageable place;  nothing like as busy nor quite a dirty or smelly and we feel able to walk around it with some degree of comfort.  This is just a 24-hour stopover on the way to Pushkar, which is plenty of time to see the main sights.  The hotel, found through Lonely Planet, is just about acceptable for one night, but it would be a whole lot better if the sheets weren’t stained, but at least it’s quiet. 

Finding good accommodation in India is proving a little more difficult than in other places we’ve visited.  Lonely Planet isn’t reliable and independent reviews posted on sites travel sites like Trip Advisor, Asia Rooms and the like, are few.   So getting good accommodation is a bit of a hit and miss affair.  Lonely Planet may issue new editions of their guides every year, but even a cursory comparison reveals that often the information hasn’t been updated.  For instance they don’t change the room rates from one year to the next.  And we’ve come across several instances where the information is inaccurate you have to wonder if anyone has visited some of the destinations recently.

We take a stroll to visit the Jain Red Temple (Nasiyan Temple) and the Ana Sagar Temple, both of which are not too far from the hotel.  The Jain Temple is quite amazing.  A large two storey high hall is filled with golden models depicting the rather eccentric Jain concept of the ancient world as a flat disc with 13 continents and oceans depicted as concentric circles around a central holy mountain.  Alongside the world-as-a-disc model is the golden city of Ajodhya over which hovers flying swan and flying elephant gondolas.  The gaudily ornate hall and its contents can be viewed from galleries on two levels which run round three sides of the hall.

The Ana Sagar is a large lake on the banks of the pleasant (for India) Dault Bagh and Subash Bagh parks which today are crowded with people.  Overlooking the lake is a lovely marble terrace with three pavilions build by Shah Jahan under which many people are seated to escape from the heat of the sun.  The lake itself is smelly and a rather foul green colour, but this doesn’t seem to deter many people from taking a pedalo or boat ride on it.  As we meander through the park we are approached by several people who want to have their photograph taken with us.  As soon as one person asks for a photo others pluck up courage to follow suit.  We must have posed for 20 or more photos in the short walk from the lake to the park exit.  It brings home just what a novelty Europeans are in this part of the world.

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India day 11 – Jaipur, Rajasthan

Our adopted rickshaw wallah, Muktar, is waiting for us this morning and we drive out to Jaigarh Fort which sits on the hilltop above Amber.  This huge and austere fortress has commanding views of the surrounding area towards Jaipur and the < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Water Palace in one direction and over the hills around Amber to the vast plains that stretch out into the distance beyond.  As we stand looking down on the palace buildings of Amber and admiring the vista we can see the monsoon rain clouds rolling towards us.  We are in for a downpour.  We acquire an unsolicited ‘guide’ (who is actually a uniformed palace guard) as we make our way round, which is fortunate since the palace quarters are a maze of courtyards linked by dark, narrow corridors and we would never have seen everything on our own.  Andy chunters all the way round as a result;  he hates having people latching on uninvited and having to pay for the privilege, even if it is only a few rupees.  There is a little puppet theatre consisting of a puppeteer and a musician who put on, for a donation, a very short, but amusing performance involving four puppets – a belly dancer, two acrobats and a snake charmer – the whole thing can’t have lasted more than three or four minutes.  We trot round what by now is starting to become a familiar Moghul palace layout – some prettily decorated buildings not quite as impressive as some we have seen.  There is a beautiful formal courtyard garden with fountains (not working) though with two tall arches framing the mountain view beyond.  Once through the palace buildings our unofficial ‘guide’ expects a tip despite the signs about the place stating that tipping is not allowed and after paying him a small sum we make our way to look at the Jaya Vana, the world’s largest wheeled cannon, which also has the distinction of never having been fired in anger.  It is certainly enormous.  Another man tries to insinuate himself  as our guide to reel off information that is openly on displayed alongside the cannon.  We give him short shrift. 

The monsoon clouds we spied earlier have caught up with us and we, and several other people. are forced to take shelter under an arched gateway.  It’s only a short downpour but there seems to be an amazing amount of run off as a result and when we get back to Jaipur there is quite a bit of localised flooding.  Interestingly, Indians don’t seem to bother with rain capes or umbrellas;  they either brave the rain or take shelter and wait for it to pass. 

We have rather miscalculated our itinerary not realising that most monuments close at 4.30pm and it is already 3.30pm when we find a restaurant to have lunch.  So we have to forgo the Hawah Mahal (Palace of the Winds) and the Temple of the Sun God and instead decide to visit the jewellery bazaar after lunch.  At least that is the intention, but Muktar has other ideas.  The bazaars are not a good place to buy jewellery apparently;  he knows somewhere that is much better value and takes us to a small shop up some back alley that we would never have found in a thousand years if left to our own devices.  We cynically, and perhaps somewhat uncharitably, assume that it is somewhere he gets commission.  It turns out to be a good place though after a little haggling we return to the hotel with two bracelets (for me) and a ring (for Andy).

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India day 10 – Jaipur, Rajasthan

No more walking for us, at least not while we are in Jaipur.  Jaipur is much better viewed from the back of an auto-rickshaw – far less tiring and it doesn’t seem quite so filthy.  So we hire Muktar Hussein and his rickshaw at 400 rupees (£5) for about five hours.  On our agenda are the famed < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Pink City, City Palace and Amber.

The Pink City is surrounded by a crenulated wall which was painted pink in 1876 by Maharaja Ram Singh in honour of a visit by the then Prince of Wales.  Originally build in 1727 by Jai Singh II it follows a grid layout with wide intersecting boulevards cutting swathes through the city dividing it into nine artisanal areas.  There are 100s of shops in the vibrant bazaars that line the boulevards;  all painted pink and carrying black Hindi script on their fascias which gives the old city a very uniform appearance.  It’s teeming with people and the traffic is horrendous – the usual mayhem  of rickshaws, mopeds, cycles, horse and carts and cows all vying for position as they weave in and out of any available space.

In the heart of the Pink City is City Palace, the official residence of the current Maharaja and home to the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum.  Like much of the old city it is painted pink with contrasting white highlights.  It is a vast complex of beautifully preserved buildings and courtyards, fabulously decorated ceilings and delicate frescos.  Entering through the Virendra Pol the first building to greet you is the lovely Mubarak Mahal (Welcome Palace) a blend of Rajasthani, Moghul and British architecture which was designated the world’s most beautiful building of the twentieth century by some august body, the name of which I forget.  An armoury is housed in the former quarters of the Maharani, a grand building with the sumptiously decorated ceilings.  The Diwan-i-Khas is a cool, open-sided marble pavilion which houses two enormous matching silver vessels that are in the Guiness Book of Records as the largest in the world.  A group of women in vibrant, richly decorated saris sit amongst the pillars applying intricate henna patterns to each other’s hands.  In the Pitnam Niwas Chowk courtyard four ornately painted gates represent spring, summer, autumn and monsoon.  Two have been lovingly restored and a third is work-in-progress.  There are several shops around the palace selling clothes, trinkets, souvenirs and jewellery and we have been advised by our driver that they are over-priced, no doubt to discourage us from making any purchases before he has a chance to take us to some factory shop where he will earn a commission.

We lunch at Ganesh, a tiny restaurant situated on top of the city wall which, despite the suspect interior, serves really tasty food.  We take a short stroll along Bapu Bazaar which specialises in clothes and shoes, but with shopkeepers continually hassling us (Indian shoppers don’t get the same treatment) it’s impossible to browse in peace.  So we retreat back to the rickshaw and head off to the Amber Fort.

Amber is situated in green hills about 11 km outside Jaipur.   Part fort, part palace, it’s faded pink walls loom high above us sitting on a rugged outcrop and it’s quite a climb to the entrance particularly in the heat.  The outer fortifications which encircle this fortress palace  and the town that nestles under its walls, hug the contours of the surrounding hills.  Once the ancient capital of Jaipur state, it is in remarkably good condition considering it dates back to 1592.  Built by Maharaja Man Singh and later extended, it is a labyrinthine palace with some striking buildings:  the sandstone and marble Diwan-i-Am pavilion which remarkably wasn’t sacked by the invading Moghuls;  the small and intricately carved marble Sila temple; the exquisite Ganesh Pol (gate) decorate with a delicate floral mural looking as fresh as the day it was first painted (almost);  the oh-so-over-the-top Jai Mundir with its mirror-encrusted facade and opposite across a formal courtyard garden the Sukh Niwas (Hall of Pleasure).  The buildings of the women’s harem, by contrast, seem rather plain and uninspiring.

As anticipated Muktar’s suggests we might like to visit a textile factory shop specialising in block printed fabrics and since he will earn a commission for taking us, we agree to go along.   After all we might see something we like.  But after looking at several bedspreads and wall hangings of rather indifferent quality we extricate ourselves and return to the hotel. 

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India day 9 – Jaipur, Rajasthan

The Hotel Karni Niwas is a tidy place but a tad impersonal.  Our room is one of several off a long first floor terrace which overlooks a pleasant garden that none seems to use and which is spoilt only by an obligatory pile of rubbish in one corner – builders’ rubble fortunately;  only an eyesore and not a health hazard.  There is no dining room, but amazingly there is room service and breakfast – and dinner too if you want it – is served on the terrace outside our room.  Importantly it’s quiet, a big plus in this country.  There is even hot water, but it’s difficult to distinguish it from the cold, the temperature of both is more or less the same.  But who needs hot water in this heat?  There are some monkeys on a flat roof opposite finding the flies just as irritating as we do.

We go for a walk to orientate ourselves with the intention of visiting the < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Pink City.  What a mistake!  We manage to get completely lost – no street signs make map reading a nightmare.  India cities are not for exploring on foot;  pavements exist not for walking on, but for sleeping, sitting and parking and using as a toilet.  Any pavement that is available for walking on is usually broken, filthy or covered in rubbish or piles of rubble.  Indian is definitely best experienced from inside a rickshaw or even better, an air conditioned car.

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