Tuesday 31 March 2009

On the roof of Saffron restaurant with fort in background

Jaisalmer

Our train pulled into Jaisalmer station at 6:00am, where we were surrounded by crowds of people trying to get us to use their taxis or to stay at their hotels. In the end we chose to climb into an old jeep driven by an old man with earrings and a big moustache. After roughly 10 minutes of driving, the jeep drew to a halt in the centre of a small square in the ancient fort. It was dark and the only sounds we could hear were those of a few twittering birds and barking dogs. As we walked up a lonely alleyway some stray dogs followed us from the square whilst barking furiously. The streets were old and cobbled and the walls high with many narrow paths branching in all directions. We finally found our hotel and to our relief we were greeted by Chimmy who owns the rooms inside this “Haveli”. The Haveli is 500 years old and actually, the floor of the room we are sleeping in is made of dried mud. From our room we can see a sacred temple and the small street below, and it is noticeable that all of the buildings are made of sandstone.
Later that morning we decided to go and explore Jaisalmer. The moment we stepped out of the hostel we saw a cow roaming the streets. Is it totally safe to walk past a sacred cow? No, not, if, like Simon, you don’t like being gored by its massive horns.
The further we walked, the more people we saw in their shops selling small ornaments, tapestries and throws for chairs or walls. Jon managed to haggle a small gift down from 250 rupees to 110 rupees. Bargain! Now lets hope he can fit it inside his backpack so that he can bring it home.
We were lucky enough to be in the square of the fort when a special festival, unique to Jaisalmer, was taking place. We noticed that a large representation of the Hindu god Shiva’s, wife was paraded through the small square, out of the Fort and down to Lake Gadi Sagar. Normally, in other processions, the king (maharaja) of Jaisalmer rides at the front, but in this particular one he rode behind because he is not higher than Shiva’s wife. In Jaisalmer the maharaja is viewed as a God in human form. In olden days he would ride in the processions on an elephant, but these days he rides a white horse. Amazing that we should stumble upon this yearly event!
Following the procession we went up a small cobbled street inside the fort and up some stone steps where we finally reached the top of one of the forts towering walls. It was great to view the city from so high up and to see the sun go down. We could clearly see that the sandstone houses almost matched the colour of the sand in the desert surrounding the town. It was at this point that we truly understood why the nickname for Jaisalmer is “the Golden City”.

Lassi drinks and a view from the fort over the "Blue City"


Jodhpur

On arrival in Jodhpur we managed to leave our bags in the station for the day, whilst we had a look around the city. We visited the Meherangarh Fort, which towers over Jodhpur and the view from there was breathtaking. We could see a palace in the distance and the whole of Jodhpur’s blue city beneath. The fort was our escape from all the hustle and bustle and it was great to take our time and chill with coke, fanta and cool, cool water.
We can’t believe how busy the small and winding streets here are. There are loads of autorickshaws, motorbikes, cars and people, not to mention the camel and all the sacred cows. There are more markets with people selling spices, clothes and crafts.
We took a shortcut up a dark narrow street where families socialised with one another in their doorways. There were more cows here and a load of flies!
We’re writing this blog right now in the Mishrilal lassi bar in the market in Jodhpur right next to the clock tower. Everyone is really friendly, and Manish Borana has given us some great Indian music to play in itunes. The makhania lassi here must surely be the BEST in the world; and at only 15 rupees (21p) we thought we should at least try it. Yum! We’ve had six right now already, and we had 4 for breakfast.

Then we stumbled upon a shop selling traditional Rajasthani puppets in many bright colours, all sold in pairs so that the maharaja puppet comes with his matching queen. This style of entertainment must surely be centuries old? And then it was time for our first real taste of restaurant food in India. Would it be different from the style of food we love so much at the Taj Mahal restaurant in St Austell? Lots of people say that Indian food in India is very different from that served back home, and boy were they right!
We found our waiting train for Jaisalmer in very good time: our carriage was in pitch darkness and it was a little intimidating settling into our dusty berths with no light. Eventuallly we got underway and gradually the air coming in through the window began to change: we were entering the Thar Desert, and the sand was getting everywhere! Jon woke up half way through the journey to find that loads of sand had blown in through the window and all over him. Ears included!

Indian family who gave us food on the train

Mumbai to Jodhpur on the train

When it was time to leave Mumbai to reach our train at Bandra Terminus station, we were greeted in the town with a taxi driver shouting, “Where do you go to?”; and following our reply he said “10 dollars”. We tried haggling him down and little did we know that another taxi driver was watching us. This other taxi driver shouted “200 rupees!”, which is a little less than 3 pounds, so we took that. We drove past the Dharavi Slum where clips of the newly released Slumdog Millionnaire film was based. These slums are home to over 1 million people and it was impressive to see how creative the Indians living there are. They use anything they can find to build their homes; corregated iron as roofs or walls, slanted ladders as steps and so on. The driving was absolutely manic with cars, small bikes and the occasional push-bike weaving in and out of each other, but we trusted the driver not to crash.
When we finally got to Bandra Terminus Station we were pleased to locate our second class sleeper coach easily. Our names, ages and berth numbers were posted on the board: so the online booking had actually worked! During the day the chairs are folded up for seating and as from 9:00pm we could unfold the chairs to turn them into beds. Sitting adjacent to us were an Indian family who were very friendly. They were giving us information about the trains, and where to get water, food etc. In the evening they offered us food that they made up, which included chapatti, roti, chutney, vegetable curry, Bombay mix and golden Halwar for dessert!
Jon decided to get off the train at Vadadora to buy some more water, because they said that the stop would be for about half an hour. After five minutes, the train started to move out of the station……. Luckily, Jon got back on in time with the water. Mission accomplished! The journey through Gujarat had large towns lined with slums and open fires burning at night, and the smells of heavy industry sometimes pervaded the air. But when we awoke in the morning, the scenery had changed; the air was purer. We were in Rajasthan!

Friday 27 March 2009

How cricket is done in Mumbai.

Mumbai

Before we reached Mumbai (formerly Bombay), we had it in our minds that it was going to be a city full of modern looking skyscrapers butchering the beautiful Indian landscape that once existed there. How wrong were we??? In fact we were very impressed with the leafy avenues that lined the hustle and bustle of street beggars and traffic, particularly taxis. It seemed that everywhere we went there would always be somebody trying to sell us a taxi ride or a tour of the city in their "air conditioned" taxi: by "air conditioned" this generally meant that the taxi had windows that opened to let a breeze in. We walked.
A friend of ours, Fran Sandham, joined us on our Mumbai adventure and we walked for miles. We found ourselves walking among all kinds of people from rich businessmen to poor vagrants, as well as market traders trying constantly to impress us with their handicrafts, clothes, trinkets and... well... you name it.
As a taster of Indian creative skill, we saw a poor looking man sitting on a bike that had its back wheel raised off the ground, pedalling like mad as a way of sharpening knives. He had created a kind of pulley system between the back wheel and a circular piece of metal, which he had placed on his handlebars. When the metal rotated as a result of his pedal-power he pushed the blade of one of his many knives into the spinning metal. Sparks were flying everywhere, and it was great to see the satisfaction written on his face as he held each knife high for closer inspection.
We also got a feel for the national sport, cricket. We walked through a ginormous maidan where there were an uncountable number of cricket matches taking place. It was great to leave the streets where the poor seemed to scrape by and to see people having fun and time for themselves. We stopped and watched for a few minutes but then decided to continue exploring the city. We were later following a main road called Marine Drive, which curves around the bay and we saw a few people playing cricket in the street. We got invited to play and we couldn't say no. So Jon started off by bowling, followed by Fran, and then Simon tried his hand at batting. I think they were impressed, but we decided to leave it to the professionals.
We found the Gateway to India, a famous landmark on the coast of Mumbai, and we were being asked to have our photos taken with other Indian tourists. We stumbled across a famous nearby restaurant called Leopold's and stopped for a naan bread and a lassi (a fruity smoothie-like drink made from milk, yoghurt and mango). We found out that this restaurant had an attack of terrorism in November, 2008 and this was evident from the bullet holes in the wall.
After a late lunch we wandered to the CST station, which was used as part of the film set in the newly released film, Slumdog Millionaire. The architecture of the station and many of the important buildings around Mumbai were fairly gothic. There were even stone gargoyles stretching out from a small tower on the roof of the station.
As we continued walking into the evening, we saw traders packing up their stalls and some people sleeping in the streets, but the roads remained busy and loud.