Rajasthan is the most visited state in India, and deservedly so. Of course, this means that it has the highest concentration of idiot tourists, and of Indians who rely on tourism for their income. I'd been looking forward to seeing the sights, but had the impression I wouldn't want to hang about there - once you've seen how pleasant things can be, it's hard to tolerate constant hassle. So, when deciding where to go with Mum for a couple of weeks of speedy travelling, it seemed like a good place.
It rained and rained in Delhi the day before she arrived. Paharganj was literally flodded with shit, and when I failed to find a hotel in a nicer area to ease the introduction to India, I wasn't best pleased. But, the weather changed and it had pretty much dried up by the time she arrived. Still, I'd figured it'd be best to leave Delhi quickly and spend a couple of days there at the end of the fortnight. So, I booked an overnight train to Jodhpur on the 2nd night. The one redeeming feature of Paharganj is that its very close to New Delhi train station, where our train was from. Or so I thought...
Having walked the length of the main bazaar (backpacks on, bit of a gauntlet), we arrived at 4.20pm, the departure time being 4.45, but couldn't see any info about it on the boards. Fortunately, we asked an official who actually knew what he was talking about, and he told us the train was, infact, from Old Delhi station. Oh dear. Never done that before, thought I'd checked, obviously hadn't. The only way we could possibly get there in time was on the Metro which, until then, I'd suspected was a figment of someone's imagination.
So... Cross the bridge over NDLS, 4.25pm, find the metro, figure out how to use the metro, security checks, 4.30pm, wait for train, giving up hope rapidly, train arrives, delhi metro turns out to be the best underground system I've ever been on, arrive in Old Delhi, 4.40pm, run to train station (with backpacks), try to find the platform number, its platform 23 and 2/3 or something, where the f*ck is that, run around, see platform in distance, 4.45pm, sprint down the platform, train begins to pull away, we catch it up and jump on, 4.48pm, welcome to India Mum!
I'm not going to turn this into a spiel of "I'm so proud of my Mum for coming to India and coping better than lots of backpackers" but she did and I am.
So, first stop Jodhpur.
Blue city, awesome fort, somewhat photogenic. Here's the view at sunrise from the 500 year old haveli we stayed in:
And here's a view from that there fort:
Its called Meherangarh, the maharaja of Jodhpur still lives there, and there's too much to get written in this post that I'm not going to go into more detail. Here are some monkeys though:
1 day in Jodhpur was enough. Loadsa hassle. Onto Jaisalmer. Citadel in the desert. C'est vraiment magnifique:
An advantage of travelling with mummy bank is nicer hotels, and in Jaisalmer we stayed in a brilliant one on the fort wall chcheckcheckchcheckchcheckitout:
A room
with a view
I'm not a big fan of camels. They smell, spit, piss on their tail then flick it at you, make phenomenal gurgling noises, and there's something sinisterly reptilian about them. Still, when in India...
It was good fun, nice to see the Thar desert, and fortunately we decided against camping under the stars as it proceeded to rain all night.
Sorry I'm doing this so quickly but I figured its better than not writing it... Next to Jaipur.
Came here at the start of my trip with Will and Jonny, watched cricket and was ill so hadn't really seen it. Not my favourite place (sorry to those of you to whom its dear). Its the capital of Rajasthan but is (relatively) very new, and doesn't (for me) have much in the way of redeeming features to compensate for the grime... Its OK, and worth seeing on the way somewhere else. Its also part of the golden triangle (Delhi-Agra-Jaipur) which is the most popular tourist route, especially for uberposh chauffer-driven eurocrats who are very happy to compare prices to Mayfair. Nice sundial though!
Ok Ok, I'm sure I haven't seen the best of Jaipur but nevermind. Next we went to Bharatpur for the Keoladeo Ghana national park. I found my tolerance for bird watching to be higher than I'd imagined, I guess because Daddy was a twitcher! And as this post is really a slideshow, here be birds:
And check out the driver we hired for a day:
One of the funniest things I've seen in a long time involved him stopping the car and mock-chasing a small child who'd been running after us for about 3 miles, asking for empty water bottles which we didn't have. In his turban and jootis (camel-leather slippers), running bow-legged, really slowly, waving his fist in the air while the terrified child fled was hilarious. We found the kid on the way back and gave hime 2 bottles though.
(I don't blame him for being scared though - Rajasthanis are a fiery people. I've seen 4 physical fights in India, all of them in Rajasthan)!
We stayed in Bharatpur for a few days with a really nice family, and then made our way back to Delhi via...
This is the hall of private audiences at Fatephur Sikri. It was built by Akbar, the greatest Mughal, to be his capital. He was into tolerance, peace, common truths between religions, and built this beautiful city 50 miles from any water, so it was quickly abandoned and is now a ghost town.
Then a quick stop in Agro (again), where we saw this
which is effectively the predecessor to this
Then, as our train was delayed by 5 hours, we played the uberposh chauffer-driven eurocrat card and took a taxi back to Delhi.
2 weeks was about right, I think my Mum would agree!
Again, sorry for writing this so quick like, but who reads this rubbish anyway?
byebye
