Trip Report - April 3
A Whirlwind Tour of Rajasthan, India

Well, India's been marvelous -- a rich interweaving of history, color, landscape, cities, crowded markets, stretches of near-empty desert...all of it navigated by every conceivable form of transportation: camel carts, water buffalo, lumbering elephants, donkeys, horses, human-powered carts, bicycle rickshaws, motorized trishaws, cars, trucks, buses, and everywhere people walking: women in bright saris flowing past with jars of water or bundles of wood on their heads; dusty children begging at car windows; touts selling magazines, bangles, postcards, sandlewood carvings of Ganesh...

I arrived in Mumbai and spent the night (my flight to Delhi was the next morning) -- which would be irrelevant detail except that I met two wonderful French-Canadian men in the airport gift shop who were on the same flight to Delhi. We got along instantly, and they invited me to leave my bag in their room and join them for their day off around Delhi (they had been working in India for a couple of months, so had a car and driver). Off we went.

As you may know, I'm not much of a shopper, but the markets here are a feast for the senses, and Jean-Marc was an avid shopper in search of "just a few more" gifts (they were leaving for home in two days). So for two days, we shopped and wandered and bargained and laughed, and Jean-Marc treated us all to dinner at a nearby five-star hotel -- an experience in and of itself, all for less than you'd pay for a decent "normal" restaurant meal back home.

After they left, I spent half a day figuring out how to see as much of Rajasthan as possible in just ten days -- of course, the flights to and from Jaisalmer (one of the places I most wanted to visit -- camel safari and all) stopped running just as I would have gotten there, and the city of Delhi was banning diesel commercial vehicles the day I wanted to return, and the trains are notoriously complicated to navigate...so the travel agent convinced me to hire a car and driver that would pick me up at 4 a.m. the next morning. Yikes!

For the afternoon, I took a cycle rickshaw through Old Delhi (narrow streets packed with markets, people, and bundles of electrical wiring sprawling up the walls and hanging ominously overhead) and visited a few monuments, then met a young man who (as a travel agent with his own small family business in Connaught Place) at first wanted to sell me a tour to Kashmir, but when he realized I wasn't buying and had a decent sense of humor, invited me home for dinner -- a fresh vegetable curry that provided my first experience eating with my hands. It was fascinating seeing his apartment and neighborhood: a small glimpse into everyday life before I crawled into the confines of a hired car.

The car ended up being a very efficient choice, sweeping me hundreds of kilometers west from Delhi in a matter of hours -- the first morning, I fell asleep in the back seat after a couple hours of dark and uninteresting urban highway pre-dawn scenery, and awoke an hour later in a magical setting: the road lined with great arching boughs of tall trees backed by miles of pale yellow dirt interspersed with tufts of wispy green bushes, spreading away toward hill stations rising suddenly in the distance. I was enchanted.

We spent the night in Bikaner, where we arrived in time for me to visit the fort palace, then left early the next morning for Jaisalmer, where I left immediately for a "camel safari" -- a cheesy tourist experience, of course, consisting mainly of a bored camel and a bit of wandering around adobe villages (interesting, actually), but one which culminated with a night sleeping on the dunes under the starriest sky I've enjoyed in a long time (the new moon was only a day or two old, so there was no light to block the Milky Way), and a gorgeous dawn breaking over the horizon and spreading its soft light over the sands.

I then spent a night inside the fort walls, wandering the maze-like streets and then meandering my way through the outlying town to a "sunset spot" overlooking the city. Of course, my wandering was constantly accompanied by greetings, questions ("Hello! Hello! What is your name? What is your country? Are you married? Do you like India? Hello! School pen? Rupees? Photo? Hello! Madam, madam, come into my shop. Just for looking, no have to buy. Hello!"), and children wanting to shake my hand...the quintessential tourist experience: absolutely no hope of blending, invisibility, unobserved observation.

The next day, we moved on to Udaipur, which had a fantastic City Palace and proved a lovely place for wandering, especially because one of what appear to be a multitude of holiday festivals (there seems to be one every day or so occurring in one region or another) was happening while I was there. I slipped outside in the evening to join the crowd of happy families making their way up a hilltop at the edge of town for a fireworks display and carnival.

We then headed for Ranthambore National Park, where I took a canter (a big tourist truck) through the park and was one of the lucky few aboard who caught a glimpse of tiger movement in the distance -- just a brown blur in the tan grass (I still think it could just as easily have been a deer (*grin*)) -- and ran across my first fellow tourists. The Australian woman I was sitting next to was a true traveler: three years working and wandering around the world, and her life's dream was to see a live, wild tiger (it was her third trip into the park, and she wasn't one of the lucky few in our canter, which struck me as unfair).

She was staying at my guest house along with three other travelers, and they had managed to arrange a jeep (difficult to come by since they're booked weeks in advance) for the afternoon. So rather than move on as originally planned, I joined them for another trip to the park...and we all saw a tiger! It was 200 meters away, but a gentleman in another jeep loaned us a pair of powerful binoculars, and we all got to see him quite clearly, lounging in the bush grooming himself. Fantastic.

After that, I headed to Jaipur for a quick visit to the Amber Fort, city palace, and giant working observatory before moving on to Kaleodeo National Park for an afternoon of bird watching. I hired a guide, so managed to see an incredible array of bird life -- apparently there is a greater density of species in this 32-square-kilometer park than almost anywhere else on earth.

I met a couple of Germans at the guest house who were just finishing up a similar tour of Rajasthan, so we formed a caravan the next day to Fatephur Sikri (the "Ghost City") and Agra (Taj Mahal), then back to Delhi, where I had left my bag with the family of a friend and was lucky enough to be invited to use their guest room -- a welcome respite!

I fly out day after tomorrow for Kathmandu, and meet Andrew at the airport the next day (he's joining me for a trek through the Himalayas).

<Previous - Next>
or choose below:

January 10 - Hola from Ecuador!
Costa Rica, Ecuador

January 30 - Moving on from Chile
Peru, Chile

February 20 - Greetings from Laos
Thailand, Laos

March 18 - Adventures in Cambodia & Thailand
Cambodia, southern Thailand

April 3 - A whirlwind tour of Rajasthan, India
India

May 21 - Greetings from Malaysia
Nepal, Singapore, Malaysia

June 24 - Salaam from Egypt!
Bali, England, Egypt

August 29 - The Final Installment
Turkey, Spain, Italy

For a quick overview of the trip, check out travel highlights.
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