Dessert Journeys

Note: I am using this blog post as my journal for this week of travelling (because I am getting lazy about journaling about everything). So I’m sorry for the excessive detail. If you want a quicker update check out my “Photo Gallery of Abby Standing in Front of Indian Places” instead.

After one week of classes in Jaipur we headed back on the road for some more travelling. We visited 3 different cities and spent one night sleeping in tents in the dessert. I saw a lifetimes worth of forts, palaces, beautiful buildings, and picturesque man-made lakes.

Jaisalmer:

A boy playing cricket inside Jaisalmer Fort

The most striking feature was the giant fort that covers a large hill. It reminded me of old hill cities in Europe. Many locals still lived inside the fort and it was also full of temples and shops catering to tourists. It was easy to spend hours just wandering around inside the fort and trying to not let the shop keepers “help us spend our money” as they would say. The shopping in Jaisalmer was amazing. It was difficult to not get drawn in to spending hours looking at beautiful fabrics, embroidery and silver jewellery. My favourite purchase was a silver pendent with the elephant God Ganesh and other scenes from India carved into it. I bought it from a cheerful Indian man who served us hot chai and showed us cases of other unique silver jewellery that his family had carved. Whenever I did tear my eyes away from the bedspreads and scarves though I was always impressed at how beautiful the city itself was. The whole fort and many of the buildings around it were intricately carved out of a beautiful warm stone that seemed to glow a pale orange in the late afternoon light.

I spent one wonderful afternoon down by the manmade lake. We peddled a peddle-boat around the buildings and temples in the middle of the lake. Afterwards a very talented tour guide included us in his French tour of the nearby folklore museum. I finally learned what some of the mustaches in India mean (almost every man here has a mustache, it’s like continual movember). Traditionally, in this area of India at least, a mustache that curls upwards is worn only by the Rajputs (the warrior caste) and the Brahmins (the educated or priestly caste) have straight mustaches that join their beards.

Dessert Safari:

This is one part of the trip that I was looking forward to most since I first got into the India semester. It didn’t let me down at all! We drove out into the dessert through a wind storm. Sand was blowing so hard when we got out of the bus that I had to wear a scarf around my face and tucked into my sunglasses just to keep the sand off. Even with this precaution I was still picking sand out of my eyes, mouth and hair for days afterwards. I had a local guide leading my camel and often he had to lean into the wind just to stop from being blown over. The dessert was beautiful and I felt like I was inside a national Geographic article every time I looked around myself. The camel ride itself was more comfortable than I was expecting, except for the short “camel race” I went on when I thought I was going to fly right off of the camel and off into the dunes.

Camels are one of the funniest looking animals I think I have ever seen. Each camels face has a different personality and their legs move so weird! The wind was blowing so hard that I kept getting unidentifiable camel liquids blown back onto my feet. Haha, It’s a small price to pay for having them lug me around I guess.

We spent the night sleeping in the dessert in big canvas tents that made me feel like I was in the army or on an old-time British adventure. They were surprisingly comfortable once we brushed the sand off of our pillows and sheets. That night was too windy for a bonfire but we still got to see some traditional music and dance and we stayed up late snuggling under the dessert stars (dessert stars look the same as every other kind of stares - just in case you were wondering).

Jodhpur:

View of Jodhpur (the Blue City) from the top of the fort

We only had one night here but we still managed to see a lot. The fort in Jodhpur is amazing! I have seen a fair amount of castles and forts in my day but this one put them all to shame. The castle it reminded me of the most was Edinburgh cast in Scotland (I’m pretty sure Edinburgh castle is the one JK Rowling based Hogwarts off of). It was towering up on a hill above the city like Edinburgh castle, with the walls so close to the sheer cliff edge that it looks like it is an extension of the cliff itself. But  if Edinburgh castle is an elegant war horse, then Jodhpur fort is a massive and beautifully decorated oliphaunt, and it would crush the Edinburgh war horse with one tusk (sorry Katie). Haha, I guess stuff in India just has to be bigger when the walls need to defend against charging war elephants. The city of Jodhpur is beautiful as well and most of the houses are painted blue, giving it the name the Blue City. I did my course selection on top of the fort and then we walked down into the city. We passed residential neighbourhoods were there were courtyards that seemed  to be used as cow” fields” and groups of old ladies gossiping out on their front steps. Then we wandered through the market streets and got lost in the shopping area looking for a place to eat. Even after being in India for so long I still find that an hour or so of wandering around a crowded Indian city street is an overwhelming and exhausting experience (probably the equivalent of wandering around Toronto for a whole day).

Inside Johdpur Fort

Udaipur:

Udaipur is famous for its Lake. It is a beautiful city and we spent lots of time soaking up the lake views. The palace here was also amazing and we had a funny guide who spoke excellent English. My favourite part was the manikin of a famous warhorse that had a cloth elephant’s trunk connected to its face. Apparently the Rajput armies used to dress their horses up this way to defend them from the elephants of the Moghul armies that would fight with swords in their trunks. The story goes, that if the horses were disguised with elephant trunks then the war elephants would mistake them to be elephant babies and not attack them.

Udaipur felt much more like a European city than an Indian city. The rooftop restaurants and white washed patios reminded me of Greece. There are some very fancy hotels in Udaipur as well, including one that was featured in the James Bond film Octopussy and used to be a summer palace in the center of the lake.

While we were in Udaipur we got to see a little bit of the colour festival called Holi. As part of this festival social boundaries are relaxed and people throw multi-coloured paint on each other. We had to stay in the hotel for most of the festival to avoid dangerous situations and unwanted grabbing (white tourists and especially women can sometimes be targeted), but we did get to go out afterwards and see lots of people covered head to foot in dye. Everyone was extra friendly and wishing us happy Holi wherever we went. There were still some people out with dye and water balloons but the worst I got was some little boys shooting water guns at me. The night before was more exciting. On this night people light up fires of straw in the streets and set off fire crackers. It was a little scary to push our way through crowds of people and fires to find our way to the main road to pick up a rickshaw back to our hotel. There were people celebrating everywhere and loud western pop music blaring. The craziest part was when we had to cut across the main square. In order to get past the mob of onlookers we had to walk so close to a giant bonfire that I felt the heat on my face and just kept hoping that a fire cracker was not going to explode at me.

A straw bundle about to be lit on fire

"Holy Cow!"... I mean cow that got Holied (covered in colour)