Northern India...After leaving the beautiful colourscape of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, I flew to the North, to the princely state of Rajasthan. I had heard the North would be cold and chaotic, so I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful North and my experiences there. Here are some of the highlights.
Palaces and Forts
One absolutely fantastic thing about the princely state of Rajasthan was that we got to live, as the princes do, in palaces. Our tour leader, Veerendra liked to let things fly under the radar and downplay our accomodations, warning us that the next place on the list might be 'dodgy'. The first dodgy place we stayed, the Bissau Palace in Jaipur, blew our minds. There were marbled hallways, arches and lookouts, foyers and murals. Us ladies were outfitted in flowing saris and the men in snake charming turbans, where we danced around a campfire under the stars, in the courtyard. The Hotel Raj in Ranthambore had mosaic'ed and muralled rooms with crossed swords and rifles adorning the walls, and a series of beautiful courtyards and spas (Ayuderic massage #5) rimming the outdoor pool. We stayed at the Ishwari Niwas in the small village of Bundi. This was a charming, but eccentric little village where the village children were extremely mischievous and kept pinching my butt. They were little camera hounds too and very fiesty. You almost had to run up the hill to escape them, up to the palace. Here, we had drinks on the terrace with the King, a strapping young man with a pseudo Salvador Dali-esque moustache. After all these palaces, Veerendra warned us that we were going to be camping overnight, but again, it was this amazing place where the Feudal Lords used to camp, in Pangarh. Here were permanent campsites with immaculate canvas tents housing cosy beds with plaid wool blankets and fully functioning plumbing! We had an amazing catered meal in the dining cabin, followed by a campfire by the lily padded lake.
My absolute favorite castle though, was the Castle Bijapur. This was a castle I could have stayed at for a week as it was replete with every kind of lounging area imaginable. You had nooks and crannies of lounging areas, chaise lounges by the pool, swinging chairs on the terrace, cushioned benches on the lower floors, massage parlours and henna parlours. Actually, this was another weird massage I had. I had asked for a female masseuse, but her baby was fussy and she had to breastfeed, so she got her husband to sub in for her, until her baby was sated and she could take over. My travelmates Eva and Norrae and I all got henna done on our inner arms and compared results as the days went on. I was so glad I decided to do henna in India as one of the guys from my hostel in Manaus got his henna from some beach boy in Rio, and God knows what they were using for dye, but when he went up to the Amazon for five days, that stuff permeated his skin to the point of a chemical burn. And set. Best to do you henna'ing in India, my friends.
Our final stay was in the Jagat Palace in Pushkar. It was a total fluke that we got to stay here at all as rooms cost hundreds of dollars a night, but the owner of Intrepid is friends with the owner of the Jagat, and so we lived the life of luxury in marbled rooms with muralled en-suite bathrooms and a sparkling ice-blue pool where the brightly turbaned waiters bring you hot dishes wrapped in steaming foil. We took a camelride here, and when we arrived back at the Palace, twinkling and opulant against the black and stars, I couldn't believe this was my home for the night. And then like Cinderella after the ball, it all came crashing down the next night when we took...
The Night Train (and the Local Train)
After domino nights in the brilliant palaces of Rajasthan, it was a bit of a rude awakening to board the night train from Ajmer back to Delhi, at the end of our trip. This actually was dodgy. Reality check. Although I had taken a night train in the South, bunking in with the girls in a pseudo sleepover, I wasn´t prepared for this particular night train. First of all, we were mixed in with the locals, some of whom had absconded our bunks and weren´t too happy about being booted out in mid-snooze. Second of all, I was chatting to my dormmates, Eva, John and Matt with our Tour Leader Veerendra and this crusty old man hushed us vehemently and nattered at us in beligerant Hindi. Then, at 3 a.m. he decided to wake up and order a seven course meal while blaring music and blasting the lights. So, I´m not sure where the reciprocity was in that. Poor Veerendra was runnng around like a headless chicken, jack-of-all-trading to get people settled in bunks, accomodate Jean who was sick, get extra bedding and deal with what I like to call ``Post Palace Partum Depression``. I sent him a text that he was doing a good job, because I think this was probably the most stressful part of the trip for him. Then, because it was cold in the North, they had the heating on full. That, combined with the copious amounts of food scraps dropped by people trying to eat, cross-legged, in vinyl bunk beds, attracted scores of mice. At night I was sleeping and could feel a strange sensation cobwebbing across my face. Belatedly, I realized what this sensation was, and to confirm it, sat up straight in my bunk and peered over at my cabinmates. Sure enough, there was a party of mice scampering across the bodies and faces of my sleeping mates. At least the mice are small enough that you barely feel them. I was thinking about what I could use to cover my face. I had some pashminas in my bag, but refused to use them for evil. Still, I was so nervous, because I always sleep with my mouth open, and I had visions of a mouse falling into that manhole. My grandma used to say she could stuff an apple into my Grandpa´s mouth while he slept and I had visions of myself as a stuffed pig with a mouse in my mouth.
The local train was slightly better, in that you could see and avoid the mice, as they scampered among the peanut-carcass strewn floor (like a mobile East Side Mario's). There were musicians crammed into the top bunk of our train whom we tried to communicate with in broken Hinglish, and who kept smiling and laughing. They were barefoot with brass. Trumpets, trombones and saxophones.
The Toilet Man and the Tips
One of the absurdities of Indian culture is the tipping. It was by no means as aggressive as the petulant demands for baksheesh in Egypt, but is was equally bizarre in that people appeared out of the woodwork, doing these types of make-work jobs, to earn tips. One day I was in a restaurant and this comical man was shadowboxing me by the sinks right outside the cubicle. I must have raised an eyebrow or something, because he said, with that beautiful Hindi lilt and head tilt, "Yes? I am toilet man?" Very strange to have someone in such close proximity, waiting for you to finish peeing so they can hand you a towelette to dry your hands.
Then, when you might actually need some professional help, like buying medicine, it's very DIY. I was sick with this weird throat/ear infection in India. In the South, I had two doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist in my tour group so it was easy to get diagnosed and dosed. In the North, I had Veerendra recommending me different dosages of 3 strips of pills. I said, "How do you know this is what I am supposed to take?"
"Ah, no problem. I know." Meanwhile I had some of these pills left over and asked a Brazilian pharmacist if I could take them, after I got a fever in the Amazon rainforest, and he said, no, absolutely not, and went into this whole 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' speil on the adversities of abusing antibiotics.
Palm Readers and Miniaturists
One day in Udaipur, Veerendra took us to a shop of miniaturists, who paint absolutely exquisite cityscapes on fine pieces of cloth. The detailing is so finely articulated. They paint day scenes in a myriad of colours, and night scenes with hues of blue, and use all natural paints. The yellow colour comes from extracted cow urine, dried in the sun, until it becomes bright and odourless. These men remind me of the miniaturists I read about in Orhan Pamuk´s ``My Name is Red`` while I was in Turkey. As a bit of a tourist gimmick, they also do miniaturist manicures, with small scale portraits of the Maharajas, lotus flowers and tigers. In India, the Camel denotes love, the Tiger power, and the Elephant, good luck. Veerendra and I had a bit of a banter going on, because he was teaching me phrases in Hindi, and one night when we were trying on saris, Veerendra told me ´´Kapri Kolo`` which means to take it off. Then, realizing what he'd just taught me, he added, ``Ah, but in this context, I mean to take off your sari to give back to our host, but in other cases, it just means to take off your clothes, so be careful.``
I was teasing him, saying, ``Do you realize what you´ve taught me to say in Hindi, Veerendra...Hi, my name is Jennifer. I come from Canada. Take off your clothes. How much? Your price is too high. It´s too small. Lower your price. See you later.`` So this would become a running joke, and Veerendra would parade me around like a circus parrot, prodding me to do ´´the monologue`` for his friends, and giggling like a teenager. He had me do the monologue for his miniaturist friend, who then winked and gave me a miniature manicure of the Kama Sutra. Surprisingly detailed for such a small canvas!
Given my love of fortune telling and palm reading, I asked Veerendra to set me up with a palm reader after my Panchakarmic nasal cleansing. Usually, I get a kick out of fortune telling, but let me tell you, after this one I needed a bottle of rum to chase my sorrows. In a very equitable manner, the fortune teller proceded to tell me a bunch of nonsense: that I fight with my mom (though we are extremely close), that my relationship with my brother ´´doesn´t serve me´´ (though I was off to Argentina to visit him in less than a month), and to ``beware of my friends`` (though they were flying to San Francisco the next week to visit me). He told me that I will have 2 big relationships or marriages, but that they will end in disaster. One will end because I have no communication skills, and have a big miscommunication with my partner (hmmm, this could be my current relationship with Nem, since we speak Portunol), or an affair, and he will abandon me. I am supposed to have 2 daughters whom I will be very close to, but who won´t be close to my partner (because he has abandoned me). Also, I have major health problems halfway through my life. I asked, ``Do you see anything good in my future? Anything at all?`` And he said, ``Yes! Your career! It´s fantastic!`` (though I am not working at the moment.) And then, I had to fork out money for that!
What made me laugh though was that later I compared notes with my travelmate, Matt, who had had his fortune read by the same guy on the same day. I told him, ``Yeah, that guy told me I had some abilities and talents, but that I don´t use them...that I am not living up to my potential and I had better shape up.`` Matt told me the guy had said the same thing to him.
``Really? Did he also tell you you bring unnecessary stress into your life?```
``Yes!``
``Get out! What else did he tell you?``
``He told me I had to fast on Saturday to fix my life problems!``
``Me too! He told me I´ll have a disastrous relationship, but that if I fast on Monday, and wear coral and pearls, and a green handkerchief, it will all be okay.``
``Me too! Coral and black onyx.`` Comparing our cheat sheets, we realized that virtually everything was the same: the templated Foreigner Fortune! At one point, he started telling me there would be a major life change at 28, then quickly backtracked looking from my palm to my birthdate, to explain how that had actually already happened. I asked, ``So is this fortune about my past or my future?`` He smoothly replied, ``Both``. He told Matt the same thing. I guess 28 is when people have the pre-30 crisis and instigate major life changes. That was about the only accurate thing he said, given that I moved to Mexico at 28. That said, I still fasted on Monday, which was easy since I was so jet-lagged in L.A. that I slept through most of the day. I´ve also been wearing a lot of black and green, just to be on the safe side, though I haven´t managed to find any coral or pearls.
Tailors
The tailors here are incredible, much as in Vietnam. You show them a picture of something, they swatch you with a measuring tape, and 24 hours later, you have a custom-designed ´whatever-you-want´. I commissioned a green velvet smoking jacket with purple silk lining, modeled after the protagonist in this Bollywood movie I saw, Band Baaja Baaraat. It is smoking! Matt got a suit made, and had to tweak it a bit because they make the suits so tight here! But the quality is amazing, and 24 hours! I also commissioned a green, aqua and gold raw silk bedspread modelled after a bedspread I saw in a hotel suite we ate dinner at. That said, I am still awaiting the delivery of said bedspread to Canada...(cross fingers)...The tailor shop makes me nervous as the second floor is a crescent shaped marble balcony overlooking the marble first floor, with no railing. I just have visions of the tailor, abstracted my some creation, walking off the gangplank.
Auto Rickshaws and Cycle Rickshaws
They are just cool. I mean the auto ones go tuk-tuk-tuk and just weave crazily in between all the cows, and cow paddies and vendors. And the cycle ones...well, your heart just goes out to these guys. Veerendra convinced us to take these as often as we could, because the poor cyclists, some of them well into senior citizenship, are trying to make a living pedaling these things and can't make ends meet, because all the other modes of transport are so much faster. And really, we were in no rush. When you see the momentum it takes these guys to crush down the pedal to heave their passengers though...ish!
The Taj Mahal
You know how some famous monuments are so iconocized that when you actually see the real deal, it can't compare? Well, this was not the case with the Taj Mahal! (though it was the case for me with the Mona Lisa). At the beginning of our trip in Northern India, we stayed in Agra, the old Mughal capital, and made our way to the Taj Mahal. I am a sucker for love stories and this was a good one. The Taj Mahal was Shah Jahan's monument to and mausoleum for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to her 14th child in 1631. [And 329 years later, the birth control pill was inveneted...] It took 20, 000 workers 22 years, 41 million rupees and 500 kilos of gold to build!
That's love. I mean, the guy had 200 women in his harem, but he still was so devoted to Mumtaz that he did all this. Sadly, Shah Jahan's evil son, Emperor Aurangzeb, later imprisoned Shah Jahan in the Red Fort (and Shah Jahan had built it with two other Mughal Emperors. Talk about building the coffin they bury you alive in). When you look at the Taj Mahal from the Red Fort, it looks like a wistful doll house. Shah Jahan had to look out at his beautiful Taj Mahal without being able to visit it, for 8 years until he died. They say that when his eyesight started to fail him, he ordered a huge diamond ring, so that he could see kaleidoscopic microcosmic images of the Taj Mahal, up close to his face.
The Pink City and the White City
Jaipur is the Pink City, being that a lot of the architecture and buildings are a faded rose shade. We went to see a Bollywood movie at the Raj Mandir Cinema, which is pink, and guidled and ornate. If Barbie and Ken had a Dream Cinema to which they drove their pink porsche to see Bollywood movies, this would be it. Udaipur is the White City, purportedly the most romantic city in the world. We stayed at the Aashiya Haveli and travelling by boat from there, you see the shores surrounded by the Summer Palace, the Winter Palace and the Monsoon Palace, where the royal family retreated during the rains of the monsoon. Octopussy was filmed here. [On a side note, it seems everywhere I have travelled this year, has been the site of a James Bond movie. A View to Kill was filmed in Meteora, in Greece. At the Place of High Sacrifice in Petra, they filmed Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (okay, that's not James Bond, but still), and I just got back from Rio where they filmed Moonraker, on the SugarLoaf cablecar.
Pushkar Priests and Opium Dens
Pushkar is this amazing place where a lot of Indian people make their pilgrimmage. It comes from the two words, pushpa (flower) and kar (hand), and is believed to be a holy lake, such that you can wash away your sins and earn a place in Heaven. It's a lot like Singapore in that there are a lot of rules: No meat, no fish, no eggs, no alcohol, no drugs, no shoes [in fact, keep your shoes 30 feet from the lake], no kissing, no embracing (not a place for the Agentinians or Brazilians!) It houses the only Brahma temple in India, and there are Brahma priests who "make puja" (perform holy rituals) for you, down at the lake.
Basically, they give you a dish of flower petals, rice and colourful powders to toss into the lake, giving you blessings for health, happiness, wealth and love. He then ties a significant red bracelet onto your wrist which has to remain in place until it wears off naturally. I did this ceremony Feb 1st. It is now April 4th. I am still wearing this mangy, dogeared piece of string, because I am too superstitious to take it off. It has survived India, L.A. and San Francisco, Argentina and Brazil. The ritual was making me giggle because I could see the mischievous monkeys gobbling up the holy flower laiths, looking naughty; it reminded of Japan, where families would erect temples for Day of the Dead in honour of their loved ones, and put out sweets and cigarettes, which the members of the household later picked up to eat or smoke, as if to say,"Right! We're done with this, then?" The Priest kept having us repeat these fortune cookie English phrases amongst the Hindi, like "happy, healthy, family", "holy lake", "good time" and then out of nowhere: "kinky". (Perhaps an ode to the Kama Sutra.) To top it all off, there are all these people in various states of undress, bathing on the ghats, with all their wiggly and jiggly bits dangling!
Despite the fact that this is a holy place, you have the tribal girls accosting men on the streets, trying to forcefeed them henna tattoos on their arms and extracting money for it, the beggar boys supplicating you for "one chiapati, please", the nefarious undersellers of 'magic lassis' and the Opium incense stores. I happened upon one of these stores with my travelmate Matt. The guy was so keen to have us buy that he sat us down on stools in the back corner room and had us sample all the flavours. He had these huge cylindrical sticks that looked like they could prop up the House of the Three Pigs, which burn for four hours. He had a special box marked 'Opium' and when we asked to sample that one, he brought it out very ceremoniously and set it on the bench. He said it wasn't actually opium, but what I know is that when we left the store, I was so dizzy I could barely walk.
Kama Sutra and Camel Rides
Of course, when you're in India, you have to buy a pocket guide to the Kamasutra. Reading this little book makes me laugh so hard I cry sometimes. It talks about ways to seduce women; for instance, if it looks like it's going to thunderstorm, suggest a walk in the garden, such that you'll be forced to take cover and can shield your woman from the rain under a noble pretext. It also talks about the importance of pressing a woman up against a wall. Here's a memorable quote: "When a person fails to obtain the object of his desire in the normal course, he should then have to recourse to other ways of attracting a woman. Indeed, in the absence of good looks, qualities, youth and liberality, a man or woman must have to resort to artificial means or to art by using certain recipes to make one more appealing." It's like a how-to manual for the sexually-challenged.
Being that we were in Pushkar, the land of the fabled camel fairs, we had to go for a camel ride. It's hard to top the camel ride of Egypt, but this was an eclectic route alongside huge transport trucks, through small villages and winding deserts, back to our palace. We stopped for tea in the middle of the desert, and as I was dying to go to the washroom, having consumed about 2 litres of water. I was hard-pressed to find any coverage in the desert, but finally encountered a small rivet. Wouldn't you know it that crouched in the optimal moment with my pants around my ankles, I hear the roar of a motorbike with my guide and one other guide, ripping past me. Fantastic. A big moon, in the land where you can't even expose ankles or shoulders.
What's funny about camels is that when they're on a break, they repose in the exact same manner, like a well-postured paisley. However, there was this one camel (Peter's ), who was sprawled out like a tantrummed-out toddler. I have never seen a camel 'rest' like that. He looked like he'd been shot!
Clever Scams
They have so many clever ways to get a quick buck from the tourist, selling you a book with an original cover (but photocopied pages inside) or selling you something in a store that is bona-fide, and promising free shipping, but then shipping a good you didn't order.(Where is my bedspread?) I met a balloon vendor on the streets of Mumbai with my travelmate, Christophe. He was selling giant man-sized balloons, but a woman confided in me that the ones is the package are just regular-size. Sure enough, when you examine the dimensions printed on he package, they are a fifth of the size of the models. So I got the vendor to sell me singles, just to be sure I got the real McCoy.
Entertainment
This was in the South, but we saw an incredible dance festival in Mamallapuram, set against the stones of the temple, with bright, beautiful costumes and grandeur, illustrating Krishna's life. In contrast, we went to see Kathakhali theatre, a style of theatre from the eighteenth century using only costumes, makeup and intricate hand gestures to illustrate the story. We watched them put on makeup for an hour before the show even started. It was a two hour 'snippet ' of what is meant to be an eight hour play. The only part I understood was when the warrior Jayanthan runs after Nakrthundi, the sister-demon imposter, and cuts off her nose, ears and breasts, with this crazy maniacal smile on his face. And curtain!
Palaces and Forts
One absolutely fantastic thing about the princely state of Rajasthan was that we got to live, as the princes do, in palaces. Our tour leader, Veerendra liked to let things fly under the radar and downplay our accomodations, warning us that the next place on the list might be 'dodgy'. The first dodgy place we stayed, the Bissau Palace in Jaipur, blew our minds. There were marbled hallways, arches and lookouts, foyers and murals. Us ladies were outfitted in flowing saris and the men in snake charming turbans, where we danced around a campfire under the stars, in the courtyard. The Hotel Raj in Ranthambore had mosaic'ed and muralled rooms with crossed swords and rifles adorning the walls, and a series of beautiful courtyards and spas (Ayuderic massage #5) rimming the outdoor pool. We stayed at the Ishwari Niwas in the small village of Bundi. This was a charming, but eccentric little village where the village children were extremely mischievous and kept pinching my butt. They were little camera hounds too and very fiesty. You almost had to run up the hill to escape them, up to the palace. Here, we had drinks on the terrace with the King, a strapping young man with a pseudo Salvador Dali-esque moustache. After all these palaces, Veerendra warned us that we were going to be camping overnight, but again, it was this amazing place where the Feudal Lords used to camp, in Pangarh. Here were permanent campsites with immaculate canvas tents housing cosy beds with plaid wool blankets and fully functioning plumbing! We had an amazing catered meal in the dining cabin, followed by a campfire by the lily padded lake.
My absolute favorite castle though, was the Castle Bijapur. This was a castle I could have stayed at for a week as it was replete with every kind of lounging area imaginable. You had nooks and crannies of lounging areas, chaise lounges by the pool, swinging chairs on the terrace, cushioned benches on the lower floors, massage parlours and henna parlours. Actually, this was another weird massage I had. I had asked for a female masseuse, but her baby was fussy and she had to breastfeed, so she got her husband to sub in for her, until her baby was sated and she could take over. My travelmates Eva and Norrae and I all got henna done on our inner arms and compared results as the days went on. I was so glad I decided to do henna in India as one of the guys from my hostel in Manaus got his henna from some beach boy in Rio, and God knows what they were using for dye, but when he went up to the Amazon for five days, that stuff permeated his skin to the point of a chemical burn. And set. Best to do you henna'ing in India, my friends.
Our final stay was in the Jagat Palace in Pushkar. It was a total fluke that we got to stay here at all as rooms cost hundreds of dollars a night, but the owner of Intrepid is friends with the owner of the Jagat, and so we lived the life of luxury in marbled rooms with muralled en-suite bathrooms and a sparkling ice-blue pool where the brightly turbaned waiters bring you hot dishes wrapped in steaming foil. We took a camelride here, and when we arrived back at the Palace, twinkling and opulant against the black and stars, I couldn't believe this was my home for the night. And then like Cinderella after the ball, it all came crashing down the next night when we took...
The Night Train (and the Local Train)
After domino nights in the brilliant palaces of Rajasthan, it was a bit of a rude awakening to board the night train from Ajmer back to Delhi, at the end of our trip. This actually was dodgy. Reality check. Although I had taken a night train in the South, bunking in with the girls in a pseudo sleepover, I wasn´t prepared for this particular night train. First of all, we were mixed in with the locals, some of whom had absconded our bunks and weren´t too happy about being booted out in mid-snooze. Second of all, I was chatting to my dormmates, Eva, John and Matt with our Tour Leader Veerendra and this crusty old man hushed us vehemently and nattered at us in beligerant Hindi. Then, at 3 a.m. he decided to wake up and order a seven course meal while blaring music and blasting the lights. So, I´m not sure where the reciprocity was in that. Poor Veerendra was runnng around like a headless chicken, jack-of-all-trading to get people settled in bunks, accomodate Jean who was sick, get extra bedding and deal with what I like to call ``Post Palace Partum Depression``. I sent him a text that he was doing a good job, because I think this was probably the most stressful part of the trip for him. Then, because it was cold in the North, they had the heating on full. That, combined with the copious amounts of food scraps dropped by people trying to eat, cross-legged, in vinyl bunk beds, attracted scores of mice. At night I was sleeping and could feel a strange sensation cobwebbing across my face. Belatedly, I realized what this sensation was, and to confirm it, sat up straight in my bunk and peered over at my cabinmates. Sure enough, there was a party of mice scampering across the bodies and faces of my sleeping mates. At least the mice are small enough that you barely feel them. I was thinking about what I could use to cover my face. I had some pashminas in my bag, but refused to use them for evil. Still, I was so nervous, because I always sleep with my mouth open, and I had visions of a mouse falling into that manhole. My grandma used to say she could stuff an apple into my Grandpa´s mouth while he slept and I had visions of myself as a stuffed pig with a mouse in my mouth.
The local train was slightly better, in that you could see and avoid the mice, as they scampered among the peanut-carcass strewn floor (like a mobile East Side Mario's). There were musicians crammed into the top bunk of our train whom we tried to communicate with in broken Hinglish, and who kept smiling and laughing. They were barefoot with brass. Trumpets, trombones and saxophones.
The Toilet Man and the Tips
One of the absurdities of Indian culture is the tipping. It was by no means as aggressive as the petulant demands for baksheesh in Egypt, but is was equally bizarre in that people appeared out of the woodwork, doing these types of make-work jobs, to earn tips. One day I was in a restaurant and this comical man was shadowboxing me by the sinks right outside the cubicle. I must have raised an eyebrow or something, because he said, with that beautiful Hindi lilt and head tilt, "Yes? I am toilet man?" Very strange to have someone in such close proximity, waiting for you to finish peeing so they can hand you a towelette to dry your hands.
Then, when you might actually need some professional help, like buying medicine, it's very DIY. I was sick with this weird throat/ear infection in India. In the South, I had two doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist in my tour group so it was easy to get diagnosed and dosed. In the North, I had Veerendra recommending me different dosages of 3 strips of pills. I said, "How do you know this is what I am supposed to take?"
"Ah, no problem. I know." Meanwhile I had some of these pills left over and asked a Brazilian pharmacist if I could take them, after I got a fever in the Amazon rainforest, and he said, no, absolutely not, and went into this whole 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' speil on the adversities of abusing antibiotics.
Palm Readers and Miniaturists
One day in Udaipur, Veerendra took us to a shop of miniaturists, who paint absolutely exquisite cityscapes on fine pieces of cloth. The detailing is so finely articulated. They paint day scenes in a myriad of colours, and night scenes with hues of blue, and use all natural paints. The yellow colour comes from extracted cow urine, dried in the sun, until it becomes bright and odourless. These men remind me of the miniaturists I read about in Orhan Pamuk´s ``My Name is Red`` while I was in Turkey. As a bit of a tourist gimmick, they also do miniaturist manicures, with small scale portraits of the Maharajas, lotus flowers and tigers. In India, the Camel denotes love, the Tiger power, and the Elephant, good luck. Veerendra and I had a bit of a banter going on, because he was teaching me phrases in Hindi, and one night when we were trying on saris, Veerendra told me ´´Kapri Kolo`` which means to take it off. Then, realizing what he'd just taught me, he added, ``Ah, but in this context, I mean to take off your sari to give back to our host, but in other cases, it just means to take off your clothes, so be careful.``
I was teasing him, saying, ``Do you realize what you´ve taught me to say in Hindi, Veerendra...Hi, my name is Jennifer. I come from Canada. Take off your clothes. How much? Your price is too high. It´s too small. Lower your price. See you later.`` So this would become a running joke, and Veerendra would parade me around like a circus parrot, prodding me to do ´´the monologue`` for his friends, and giggling like a teenager. He had me do the monologue for his miniaturist friend, who then winked and gave me a miniature manicure of the Kama Sutra. Surprisingly detailed for such a small canvas!
Given my love of fortune telling and palm reading, I asked Veerendra to set me up with a palm reader after my Panchakarmic nasal cleansing. Usually, I get a kick out of fortune telling, but let me tell you, after this one I needed a bottle of rum to chase my sorrows. In a very equitable manner, the fortune teller proceded to tell me a bunch of nonsense: that I fight with my mom (though we are extremely close), that my relationship with my brother ´´doesn´t serve me´´ (though I was off to Argentina to visit him in less than a month), and to ``beware of my friends`` (though they were flying to San Francisco the next week to visit me). He told me that I will have 2 big relationships or marriages, but that they will end in disaster. One will end because I have no communication skills, and have a big miscommunication with my partner (hmmm, this could be my current relationship with Nem, since we speak Portunol), or an affair, and he will abandon me. I am supposed to have 2 daughters whom I will be very close to, but who won´t be close to my partner (because he has abandoned me). Also, I have major health problems halfway through my life. I asked, ``Do you see anything good in my future? Anything at all?`` And he said, ``Yes! Your career! It´s fantastic!`` (though I am not working at the moment.) And then, I had to fork out money for that!
What made me laugh though was that later I compared notes with my travelmate, Matt, who had had his fortune read by the same guy on the same day. I told him, ``Yeah, that guy told me I had some abilities and talents, but that I don´t use them...that I am not living up to my potential and I had better shape up.`` Matt told me the guy had said the same thing to him.
``Really? Did he also tell you you bring unnecessary stress into your life?```
``Yes!``
``Get out! What else did he tell you?``
``He told me I had to fast on Saturday to fix my life problems!``
``Me too! He told me I´ll have a disastrous relationship, but that if I fast on Monday, and wear coral and pearls, and a green handkerchief, it will all be okay.``
``Me too! Coral and black onyx.`` Comparing our cheat sheets, we realized that virtually everything was the same: the templated Foreigner Fortune! At one point, he started telling me there would be a major life change at 28, then quickly backtracked looking from my palm to my birthdate, to explain how that had actually already happened. I asked, ``So is this fortune about my past or my future?`` He smoothly replied, ``Both``. He told Matt the same thing. I guess 28 is when people have the pre-30 crisis and instigate major life changes. That was about the only accurate thing he said, given that I moved to Mexico at 28. That said, I still fasted on Monday, which was easy since I was so jet-lagged in L.A. that I slept through most of the day. I´ve also been wearing a lot of black and green, just to be on the safe side, though I haven´t managed to find any coral or pearls.
Tailors
The tailors here are incredible, much as in Vietnam. You show them a picture of something, they swatch you with a measuring tape, and 24 hours later, you have a custom-designed ´whatever-you-want´. I commissioned a green velvet smoking jacket with purple silk lining, modeled after the protagonist in this Bollywood movie I saw, Band Baaja Baaraat. It is smoking! Matt got a suit made, and had to tweak it a bit because they make the suits so tight here! But the quality is amazing, and 24 hours! I also commissioned a green, aqua and gold raw silk bedspread modelled after a bedspread I saw in a hotel suite we ate dinner at. That said, I am still awaiting the delivery of said bedspread to Canada...(cross fingers)...The tailor shop makes me nervous as the second floor is a crescent shaped marble balcony overlooking the marble first floor, with no railing. I just have visions of the tailor, abstracted my some creation, walking off the gangplank.
Auto Rickshaws and Cycle Rickshaws
They are just cool. I mean the auto ones go tuk-tuk-tuk and just weave crazily in between all the cows, and cow paddies and vendors. And the cycle ones...well, your heart just goes out to these guys. Veerendra convinced us to take these as often as we could, because the poor cyclists, some of them well into senior citizenship, are trying to make a living pedaling these things and can't make ends meet, because all the other modes of transport are so much faster. And really, we were in no rush. When you see the momentum it takes these guys to crush down the pedal to heave their passengers though...ish!
The Taj Mahal
You know how some famous monuments are so iconocized that when you actually see the real deal, it can't compare? Well, this was not the case with the Taj Mahal! (though it was the case for me with the Mona Lisa). At the beginning of our trip in Northern India, we stayed in Agra, the old Mughal capital, and made our way to the Taj Mahal. I am a sucker for love stories and this was a good one. The Taj Mahal was Shah Jahan's monument to and mausoleum for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to her 14th child in 1631. [And 329 years later, the birth control pill was inveneted...] It took 20, 000 workers 22 years, 41 million rupees and 500 kilos of gold to build!
That's love. I mean, the guy had 200 women in his harem, but he still was so devoted to Mumtaz that he did all this. Sadly, Shah Jahan's evil son, Emperor Aurangzeb, later imprisoned Shah Jahan in the Red Fort (and Shah Jahan had built it with two other Mughal Emperors. Talk about building the coffin they bury you alive in). When you look at the Taj Mahal from the Red Fort, it looks like a wistful doll house. Shah Jahan had to look out at his beautiful Taj Mahal without being able to visit it, for 8 years until he died. They say that when his eyesight started to fail him, he ordered a huge diamond ring, so that he could see kaleidoscopic microcosmic images of the Taj Mahal, up close to his face.
The Pink City and the White City
Jaipur is the Pink City, being that a lot of the architecture and buildings are a faded rose shade. We went to see a Bollywood movie at the Raj Mandir Cinema, which is pink, and guidled and ornate. If Barbie and Ken had a Dream Cinema to which they drove their pink porsche to see Bollywood movies, this would be it. Udaipur is the White City, purportedly the most romantic city in the world. We stayed at the Aashiya Haveli and travelling by boat from there, you see the shores surrounded by the Summer Palace, the Winter Palace and the Monsoon Palace, where the royal family retreated during the rains of the monsoon. Octopussy was filmed here. [On a side note, it seems everywhere I have travelled this year, has been the site of a James Bond movie. A View to Kill was filmed in Meteora, in Greece. At the Place of High Sacrifice in Petra, they filmed Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (okay, that's not James Bond, but still), and I just got back from Rio where they filmed Moonraker, on the SugarLoaf cablecar.
Pushkar Priests and Opium Dens
Pushkar is this amazing place where a lot of Indian people make their pilgrimmage. It comes from the two words, pushpa (flower) and kar (hand), and is believed to be a holy lake, such that you can wash away your sins and earn a place in Heaven. It's a lot like Singapore in that there are a lot of rules: No meat, no fish, no eggs, no alcohol, no drugs, no shoes [in fact, keep your shoes 30 feet from the lake], no kissing, no embracing (not a place for the Agentinians or Brazilians!) It houses the only Brahma temple in India, and there are Brahma priests who "make puja" (perform holy rituals) for you, down at the lake.
Basically, they give you a dish of flower petals, rice and colourful powders to toss into the lake, giving you blessings for health, happiness, wealth and love. He then ties a significant red bracelet onto your wrist which has to remain in place until it wears off naturally. I did this ceremony Feb 1st. It is now April 4th. I am still wearing this mangy, dogeared piece of string, because I am too superstitious to take it off. It has survived India, L.A. and San Francisco, Argentina and Brazil. The ritual was making me giggle because I could see the mischievous monkeys gobbling up the holy flower laiths, looking naughty; it reminded of Japan, where families would erect temples for Day of the Dead in honour of their loved ones, and put out sweets and cigarettes, which the members of the household later picked up to eat or smoke, as if to say,"Right! We're done with this, then?" The Priest kept having us repeat these fortune cookie English phrases amongst the Hindi, like "happy, healthy, family", "holy lake", "good time" and then out of nowhere: "kinky". (Perhaps an ode to the Kama Sutra.) To top it all off, there are all these people in various states of undress, bathing on the ghats, with all their wiggly and jiggly bits dangling!
Despite the fact that this is a holy place, you have the tribal girls accosting men on the streets, trying to forcefeed them henna tattoos on their arms and extracting money for it, the beggar boys supplicating you for "one chiapati, please", the nefarious undersellers of 'magic lassis' and the Opium incense stores. I happened upon one of these stores with my travelmate Matt. The guy was so keen to have us buy that he sat us down on stools in the back corner room and had us sample all the flavours. He had these huge cylindrical sticks that looked like they could prop up the House of the Three Pigs, which burn for four hours. He had a special box marked 'Opium' and when we asked to sample that one, he brought it out very ceremoniously and set it on the bench. He said it wasn't actually opium, but what I know is that when we left the store, I was so dizzy I could barely walk.
Kama Sutra and Camel Rides
Of course, when you're in India, you have to buy a pocket guide to the Kamasutra. Reading this little book makes me laugh so hard I cry sometimes. It talks about ways to seduce women; for instance, if it looks like it's going to thunderstorm, suggest a walk in the garden, such that you'll be forced to take cover and can shield your woman from the rain under a noble pretext. It also talks about the importance of pressing a woman up against a wall. Here's a memorable quote: "When a person fails to obtain the object of his desire in the normal course, he should then have to recourse to other ways of attracting a woman. Indeed, in the absence of good looks, qualities, youth and liberality, a man or woman must have to resort to artificial means or to art by using certain recipes to make one more appealing." It's like a how-to manual for the sexually-challenged.
Being that we were in Pushkar, the land of the fabled camel fairs, we had to go for a camel ride. It's hard to top the camel ride of Egypt, but this was an eclectic route alongside huge transport trucks, through small villages and winding deserts, back to our palace. We stopped for tea in the middle of the desert, and as I was dying to go to the washroom, having consumed about 2 litres of water. I was hard-pressed to find any coverage in the desert, but finally encountered a small rivet. Wouldn't you know it that crouched in the optimal moment with my pants around my ankles, I hear the roar of a motorbike with my guide and one other guide, ripping past me. Fantastic. A big moon, in the land where you can't even expose ankles or shoulders.
What's funny about camels is that when they're on a break, they repose in the exact same manner, like a well-postured paisley. However, there was this one camel (Peter's ), who was sprawled out like a tantrummed-out toddler. I have never seen a camel 'rest' like that. He looked like he'd been shot!
Clever Scams
They have so many clever ways to get a quick buck from the tourist, selling you a book with an original cover (but photocopied pages inside) or selling you something in a store that is bona-fide, and promising free shipping, but then shipping a good you didn't order.(Where is my bedspread?) I met a balloon vendor on the streets of Mumbai with my travelmate, Christophe. He was selling giant man-sized balloons, but a woman confided in me that the ones is the package are just regular-size. Sure enough, when you examine the dimensions printed on he package, they are a fifth of the size of the models. So I got the vendor to sell me singles, just to be sure I got the real McCoy.
Entertainment
This was in the South, but we saw an incredible dance festival in Mamallapuram, set against the stones of the temple, with bright, beautiful costumes and grandeur, illustrating Krishna's life. In contrast, we went to see Kathakhali theatre, a style of theatre from the eighteenth century using only costumes, makeup and intricate hand gestures to illustrate the story. We watched them put on makeup for an hour before the show even started. It was a two hour 'snippet ' of what is meant to be an eight hour play. The only part I understood was when the warrior Jayanthan runs after Nakrthundi, the sister-demon imposter, and cuts off her nose, ears and breasts, with this crazy maniacal smile on his face. And curtain!
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