Pur - Part III

Leaving Pushkar: check. Driving to Jodhpur: check. Which was probably the highlight of our Rajasthan odyssey.

First of all, the hotel we stayed in was something else, with a room the size of a storehouse and two double beds to match. When we chose the budget hotels and our big-chaired guy told us we wouldn’t be disappointed, I had my doubts, especially about the hotels. I had been staying at places that not even bedbugs would have wanted to be seen at, and I was halfway imagining that the ‘budget hotels’ would be something like the last bomb shelters in a Syrian village, but the truth was that there were pretty good places to stay at. Some even had hot water! Some had complementary shower gels and body lotions. But this one was, by far, the nicest one:

And in the morning, our journey started in the city’s fort, one of the most beautiful forts I’ve seen in India. Not just the fort, its different areas for different maharajas and royal wives, the very colorful rooms and simple, yet majestic inner yards, but also the view from the fort’s defense walls over the blue houses sheltered at its sides made us act like judges in a beauty pageant and decide in favor of Jodhpur, the grand winner, Miss Indian City.

Anil took us to some other must-see attractions and then, because he knew from the ‘Lonely Plan’ that it had been chosen a favorite eating spot, he took us to the 'Omlette Shop', a small stall in the heart of the old city of Jodhpur, where we ate an interesting – quite good – omelet from the guy that cooks omelets for the last twenty years. Of course, the first thing he asked us was where we were from (no surprise there), but he did impress us when he came with the food:

Notice the plate...
Score: Ciuc 1 - Ursus 0!

Well, we couldn’t let a day go by without having some frowning stares directed at us, so we decided to have a nice night out on a fancy rooftop for the sake of the view of Jodhpur and the fort at night, so we forced our way into a restaurant with, indeed, a lovely view of the surroundings. Well, the staff wasn’t exactly what you would call ‘friendly’ but they served us anyway, on the condition that we had to evacuate the place as soon as the guests for which the table was reserved arrived. But before doing so, they had us move to another table and dispatched us back and forth until we had enough and vacated the premises.

We really would have loved to stay more and look around the next day, but Anil was intent on driving early to Mount Abu, so we didn’t have any choice but wake up and leave the next at an Indian 8 AM (which, of course, is more like 9 - 9.30 AM). We stopped on the way to eat something on the side of the road and Anil was pretty relaxed when he told us that he had paid 380 rupees for the meal for the 3 of us. It doesn’t sound quite probable, as the place was just like any other place with unidentified animals running around through the kitchen (or what doubles as a kitchen when it’s not just the place to hang around or hunt for meals). We arrived in Mount Abu by a good, winding road, which made Anil happy about ‘mountain driving’, behaving more like a race car driver on a test drive, but we kept our ground (and our stomach content) and made straight for the Jain temples.

The beauty contest judges must again decide: the winner is definitely this Dilwara temple complex, with a bleak Taj Mahal as a runner up. And, although it’s free, you cannot take any pictures and they’re right, because you could spend a whole day just taking pictures of details of the three main temples or of the smaller structures. But, obviously, one hour was not enough for us at the temples and we made up our minds to come back the next day.

Anil had the major responsibility of finding a good hotel for us, so we searched some time for a decent place to stay. He eventually found something suitable and proudly showed us a double bed room in a newly built hotel, quite dingy and faded but tolerable enough. He was very much interested about our reaction, as it had probably been the first time when he had the duty and honor of choosing a room and was especially excited about the mattress’s fitness. Well, we slept well enough and in the morning we slowly walked around Mount Abu’s lake, climbing up steps to the ‘Toad Rock’, which overlooks the lake and part of the city. Going down was trickier, because we took the advice of some young Indian high school students, who, after helping their selves from my cigarettes, pointed over the edge of the rock and told us we could walk down that way. And we eventually did, after creeping through some bushes to find the path, dodging monkeys that watched us suspiciously and avoiding card playing Indians that also hid in the bushes.

Another Indian mystery: the yellow line could indicate the path (which is not easily found,
even with the line) or it could just mean the end of the safe area...

Toad Rock

And to the temples we returned. Armed with pens and paper, to sketch some details from whichever part was in front of us, because any part would do, we sat down in a far corner of  the temple's yard and started drawing. But our harmonious creative time came to a sudden end when a group of Indians flocked over to see what we were doing. Thus drawing became quite impossible because usually when you want to sketch something, it is a lot easier to actually see your model than to look up at thirty-eight smiling Indian faces who, on top of wanting to see what it is you’re drawing, will want to shake your hand as well. I chickened out and ran away from them but poor Mona had to shake everybody’s hand while showing them her work. And even so, our art session was cut short by a temple guard, who probably came to see why all the visitors stopped in a corner of the inner yard; confused about what he was supposed to do, he chased us out of the temple.

‘What do you mean? Aren’t we allowed to draw?’

He just shook his head and pointed to the exit. We understood. We had been kicked out. Even so, we went to another temple, not as beautiful but less visited, where we hastily made some sketches to avoid the guards as well as the crowds.

Back in the car, we headed towards our last stop of the special tour with the private car, Udaipur, where we got yet another (pretty nice) hotel with yet another cool rooftop view of the local palace. We walked around in the morning, looking at a temple with karma sutra carvings and then a hill with paintings of great maharajas and warriors, from which this is one of the greatest:

Yes, that’s right. The guy doesn’t have a hand or an eye, which he lost in some war, yet he’s still one of Udaipur’s best! Unfortunately, the guards at this particular gallery did not really appreciate my laughing like mad when I saw the painting.

We then prepared for the palace, the biggest of all we had seen until that point but, unfortunately not the most beautiful or interesting. I became the official photographer, as they charged a ridiculous amount of money for the cameras and Mona renounced her picture-taking rights. The palace isn’t bad by daylight, but it’s definitely much better looking by night, which we saw while taking a boat on one of Udaipur’s many lakes to see the sunset over the city.

And then there came the traditional dancing, to which Anil took us. Words are not enough to describe it. It’s just craziness – Indian level: the women who, not being able to do much work outside the house, will start using handy kitchen utensils to dance around; an old man playing an improvised violin while jumping around, looking like playing hopscotch; the women who, bored again, started dancing around with flaming kettles on their heads; a puppeteer who dismembers his puppets, this being generally considered funny; and, last but not least, the old woman who balanced pots on her head while dancing around. And two pots are okay, when compared to the 11 pots she worked her way up to! It was hard to even take a picture with all pots, so I can’t imagine how it was like to hold them!

But the next day it was over. Anil would be going back to Delhi and we’d get a bus to Ahmedabad, feeling sad and sadder about losing our faithful driver. Alas, our journey would have to continue without him, although he came with us to the bus station, making sure we’d find a bus and really leave with it. To this day I think of him as the dearest Indian I’ve met and, actually have been truly devastated when we parted. But all goes on, as will the story.