Jodhpur, Rajastan.
Diwali 2010
We went to Jodhpur via 3 nights in Ahmedabad. Not much to say about the latter other than our hotel (Hotel Volga) was pretty clean, had the first full room service we’d come across and served as a good base to crash and crash we did. Apart from two occasions to poke our noses out we really did not move, despite the lack of real windows. What we had was actually a curtained portal to the building’s central ventilation shaft. Both times we went outside it was busy, noisy and Lucy didn’t feel quite comfortable.
But our destination both of these times was The House of MG, clearly the poshest place in town. It’s a marvellous restored building with several levels/aspects to it. The first night we went we took thali on the roof terrace. This is an experience not to miss if in Ahmedabad. The mosaic lined roof holds host to a very challenging but magnificent set meal. For as many of its exquisite parts that were nothing like we’d ever tasted (some never again) there were as many again that were simply delicious.
Attentive uniformed waiters continuously served a rotation of guests against a backdrop of hazy city lights and an orange sky with traffic noise and azan from the many mosques. But the terrace placed it all slightly in the background and we enjoyed our most expensive meal to date.
The next night we went down to the roofed family eatery at ground level and were treated to the same but a couple of notches down.
The rest of the time in the city we spent watching cheesy films on HBO & WB India, trying to forget our shame of not going to Gandhi’s ashram, which was nearby. A more complex figure here that many in the West are led to believe, we thought it closely fair to sacrifice a bit of this history in favour of some lazy but necessary rest.
After this, the great Indian Railways took us to Jodhpur. This is the Sun or Blue City, where an ancient old town is walled in around the Mehrangarh Fort. Some of the buildings are very old indeed and many are painted blue. We stayed in this old area at the Cosy Guesthouse and to be perfectly honest we couldn’t have made a better choice.
But first we had to get there. Advised on many fronts to arrange a pick-up from the station, a rickshaw was waiting for us. It wasn’t long until road arteries became narrow veins which in turn split into capillaries. Jodhpur traffic is slightly slower but very strategic; the narrowness of the streets defy how rickshaws, motorbikes, cows, barrows and even cars knit themselves through them.
We were met by an alley by some smiling lads brandishing Cosy business cards who helped us get our bags from there to at least another 30 meters upwards, through alleys where more or less the same traffic can still be found and leapt out of the way of. Once at the front door, it was still another couple of flights of stairs until we knew where the hell we were.
We found our room soon enough – it was bedecked with carpets and Rajastani art plus it had the first bath we’d seen for a couple of weeks. Also aircon which we did not feel the use for, despite the heat.
Cosy is mostly blue, has a number of hand-painted bits of art on the walls and is run by Mr Joshi, his family and crew. The room terrace was where we spent most of our time with great views of the fort and the rest of the old city. The food was great, if a bit inconsistent (the English and short-term memories of the mostly young male staff was variable) but the place has a brilliant family feel.
Joshi is actually really hands on, great company with the guests and interested in spending time with many of them. His brother in law was also around a lot, buying beers and cracking jokes while arranging tours and viewings of interesting places.
We just happened to be there for Diwali and got persuaded to stay an extra night for the main event itself. The first thing you know about this festival in almost all of India are the fireworks. Seemingly bent on maiming and destruction this is week on week of explosions set by yougnsters and dads at all hours. Jodhpur seemed to shake most of the time we were there.
Cosy is a big backpacker magnet and we spent a lot of time talking, eating and drinking with our first real seam of fellow travellers from the UK, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium and the US. Funny that most of these places are those having recently had financial woes or are currently going through them…
Lucy and I took some tours on foot of the old city, went in search of cash towards the new part and walked around the frankly awesome fort. On one of the walks, our way was blocked by a bull. It would not let us go past for some time and threatened us with its horns and by stamping its feet. Not until we got past it with some difficulty did we see a cow round the corner with a calf that had just been born. The afterbirth was being circled for by dogs but we sat, we and some locals, looking at the new life for quite a while. Sometimes, it happens where it happens in India.
We also went down to Umaid Gardens, which were OK but Lucy got some hands-on harassment in the street by an old boy who we had to send on his way and the park itself was full of staring gangs of lads. She didn’t feel comfortable being out for the first time, really. We only saw one other western couple and they were being harangued by loads of kids. All in all you could give it a miss.
Mandore Gardens, on the other hand, is a 10k rickshaw ride away and is much better. It has tourist police (which we didn’t need but we friendly to chat to), loads of tame chipmunks and some pretty, if ramshackle bits of landscaping. Of course it also has a museum (suspend your need for quality labelling here) and some very nice cenotaphs of past Rajastani rulers.
On the culmination of Diwali, our unplanned night, all the guests were treated to a massive thali and took part in blessings in the family puja room. A few of us went out earlier that day and purchased a large amount of fireworks from a shop in the town, out of which everyone stepped clutching large bags of explosives and grinning very widely.
With recognition of the many worried Indian mothers and also the many (sometimes fatal) firework accidents every year, let’s look instead at the (undeniably male) joy of creating ear-splitting bangs and huge clouds of sparks. Joshi had already bought a huge arsenal and, combined together, we made a hell of a lot of noise and scorched their marble floor quite badly.
British people have been nannied and cordoned away from fireworks and although I don’t think there should be quite the described level of recklessness back home, there is much to be said for exposing Joe Public to a wee bit of real danger. Thickens the blood.
The restaurant lads were really sweet and let us know they were glad to be with us that night, seeing as they had had to work on Diwali. Joshi is building a new, more modern place down the road and I wish him & his crew every luck.
The next day we were off on the road again, now to the capital Delhi. And I already knew the feeling I had was one of dread…
After a week in Anjuna we decided (through fate and desire in equal measure) to head out of Goa for 4 nights last week, Hampi our destination.
In the next state along to the east, Karnataka, Hampi lies in an unreal setting of fractured boulders. This is OLD country, the remnants of a granite up-welling, rock fans, that occurred around 2.5 billion years ago. The granite came veined with crystalline seams which weathered in the millennia that have passed, splitting the rock into boulders and lots of them. Said to be some of the best climbing territory in India, a lot of these are humongous and they teeter and balance in impossible piles.
But it’s what people have done, and are still doing with this area of the Deccan plateau which makes the magic.
We rocked up on the train, this time taking a non-AC sleeper. Having rode la-de-da in AC Chair from Mumbai to Goa and having mellowed to India (hopefully She to us also), we were looking forward to seeing another angle on the mighty India railways.
Chai, samosi and the mad mixture of rice, nibbles and sauce we have neither tried nor worked out the formula for, flowed as usual.
We didn’t get the constant although slightly niffy comfort of AC but we did get all the smells of the passing country as it moved from deep jungle green to the reds and browns of the earth beneath, moving inland. The sleeper benches were harder than AC chairs and the company was less well-heeled but we found it well. The benches come down to form beds at night, kept in place with chains, like such carriages everywhere but you could see that the old girl had seen some human traffic; it looked more than 30 years older than the 2007 date of manufacture stamped on the window.
Once free of the train we were bum-rushed outside the main entrance by an army of rickshaw drivers, many of whom swore blind that we shouldn’t go with the guy the hostel had sent to pick us up but with them instead. Sorry chums but the man with my name on a card in his hands wins every time, in a strange town.
We were in Hospet, around 30 min rickshaw ride from Hampi and we darted through a diluted version of Mumbai traffic.
On arriving in Hampi we were taxed 10 Rs to enter as tourists, an act so swift and by-the-by that it feels fraudulent but is actually official.
We’d seen boulders and henge-like structures grow in size on the way but suddenly we were in the main Bazaar or market area, nipping through narrow alleys between hostels, shops and restaurants. We stayed at the Gopi guest-house, one of the more prominent outfits, in their second site across the way from the main building which houses a roof-top restaurant.
Our room was nice and clean and fairly large, with a roof-top area of our own but we couldn’t use this as the staff were almost permanently camped out in it to do washing, make food or even sleep at night. As ever, we spent the first evening crashed out to recover.
On waking, we began to explore. For me this meant getting my first Indian haircut. I hate having my hair cut for many reasons and the fringe I was left with only compounded my distress but I’ve now settled down into my usual handsome self.
A gora (westerner) getting a haircut seems to be hilarious for Indians and several people stopped to watch. One came with good conversation and we trooped off afterwards to discuss business, karma and the festival which was happening that night. He did invite us to eat celebratory sweets that evening with his family but he failed to materialise at the rendezvous later, more’s the pity.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get a full grip on Hinduism and its plethora of gods, festivals and regional variations thereof so please forgive and correct any of the crass errors that are bound to arise in the following.
We had arrived in time for Dasara (remover of bad fate), which in the south is the 10th day of the 9 day festival of Navratri (9 nights). Navratri is celebrated 4 times and year and is all about the mother goddess Shakti, where 9 of her forms are worshipped.
This was Sharana Navratri, the most important of the 4, during the day several bands played all day in the streets with varying degrees of talent but equal enthusiasm. The evening culminated in an elephant procession with an idol, going down the bazaar into a specially prepared area where the elephant dished out blessings with her trunk while the best of the bands let rip.
This area was then all but destroyed by military quantities of firecrackers. The remains of this arsenal was then harvested by children who did their best to maim each other with them in excellent humour. Good times!
We headed out on our first excursion the next day. Hampi bazaar is the only ‘living’ part of a huge ruined area which was once the capital of Vijayanagara, (City of Victory), a once mighty Hindu empire founded in the 12th century and sacked by Deccan Muslims in 1565.
Hampi consists mainly of a wide, kilometre long bazaar that has stone pavilions down each side, leading up to the towering Virupaksha temple to Shiva. At the temple end, shops dominate (mainly travel, food and communications) but these peeter out as you go down into local accommodation. The money obviously sticks to the temple end and all of the hostels can be found at its right hand side as you look at it.
We went down to the other end, on foot towards and over Mantanga Hill. There’s a Nandi statue of a bull at the bottom of the hill and a shrine to Hanuman at the top, where we got a blessing of ochre on our foreheads, for a modest fee of course.
Over the other side is the stunning Achyutaraya Temple and Sule Bazaar, now deserted except for monkeys and locals who use it just to hang out in peace. It really gives an impression of how Hampi might have looked in days gone by as it is more complete. A lot of Hampi stone has been re-appropriated for the modern business of tourism and local lodgings, sparking a preservation battle.
We went on from there to the main attraction, the 16th century Vittala Temple, dedicated to an aspect of Vishnu.
We took advantage of an offer from a guide, without whom we would never have had the insight he gave to the various gems hidden in the architecture such as carvings with 5 different aspects and musical pillars tuned to mimic actual instruments when struck. Friezes also tell the trading story of the area; Portuguese, Chinese and Arab visitors drove bargains for diamonds and horses. A great place.
After this, we succumbed to the standard rickshaw tour which takes in a museum (great statues, artefacts and a scale model of the whole area), the former Royal Enclosure, the Queen’s Baths and Elephant stables (sadly sans pachyderms). We headed back culturally sated but hungry.
There are unfair, guidebook-based rumours circulated about the poor cuisine in Hampi. These are unfair in the main but I would recommend Gopi for breakfast and Vikky’s roof terrace and Prince’s for dinner. These same rumours laud the Mango Tree which can be found outside the main site, down by the ghats on the river. Yes, the food is amazing but be prepared to be eaten alive yourself as you chow down.
The next day we went hiking. Taking a coracle across the seething Tungabhadra river (after much haggling and inflation of the effort involved to get across) we set out for the Hanuman Temple atop one of the tallest hills. This was well worth the trek and the braving of weightlifting-class monkeys who prowl the 570 steps. At the top is a shrine to Hanuman and his mother and we received more blessings there. Hanuman is Lucy’s favourite Hindu deity while mine is Ganesha, the elephant-headed god who is lord of obstacles and writing.
As an atheist, I have to express the genuine spring in the step which blessings have given us, even aside being a few rupees lighter each time.
We tromped back along back roads through paddy fields that have gushing irrigation channels. The sight of us brought much grinning and head waggling from locals in SUVs and rickshaws. We began to think we must be mad to be hiking in the land of the rickshaw. At one point an SUV screeched to a halt next to us and kids, as bewildered as we were, were pushed through the windows by their parents by use of their ankles to shake our hands and say hello. As quickly as they came, they were off again, tooting the horn until out of sight.
We cut by a ruined bridge into Virupapur Gaddi, a small settlement across from Hampi. This is a peaceful haven for yoga and climbers but is cut off from Hampi after the last river crossings at about 6pm.
We spent most of the next day there waiting for our sleeper bus back to Goa in the evening. Sleeper buses are no such thing but I’ll expand on this in a future post on Goa.
So that’s Hampi; full of smiling children, friendly dogs and cows (in various states of health I’m afraid; we saw some terrible sights of animal neglect but never cruelty), gods, chalk art in the doorways and ruins.
I sincerely hope that the clearly advertised educational and environment charities/NGOs there succeed in making the area sustainable and keeping it beautiful. We want to return.
