Photo post: forts, vegetables, independence

I’m trying to avoid typing too much as my arms hurt lately, but here’s a quick blog post ofsome recent sights. Last weekend we took a tour of the three major forts in the Jaipur area. This photo is on the road to Amer Fort:

Apparently you can take an elephant ride up to the fort, though we were such a big group that this was not an option for us.

The forts are, as usual, breathtakingly intricate and beautiful. If only we could rent one of these for our wedding reception! (Actually, we could, it’s just prohibitively expensive…)

India has such beautiful old buildings. Hundreds of years old, crumbling, and lived in. They’re fascinating to look at. I think I could just look at old buildings all day.

From Amer fort there is an old wall that extends around what used to be the capital of Rajasthan. It reminds me of the Great Wall of China except, well, smaller.

Beautiful.

Old, old, OLD paintings in the fort:

A view from the top of one of the forts out over the city of Jaipur:

I just liked the little turret thingies:

I was telling my friend Bill the other day that I’ve gotten rather fond of the fruit and vegetable carts that are pushed around the streets every day. We ran into this fellow outside our school one day:

On August 15th, India’s independence day, we went out shopping. We saw some people celebrating on the street. Ironically, a number of people wished us “Happy Indian Independence Day.” In English.

Okay, back to work! I’ve got a ten-page paper due tomorrow and I’m only on page 6!

photo post: qawwali, the famous pigs, and Teej

I’ve been working on getting some photos uploaded and compressed for web viewing. This first batch is a bit old. Tomorrow I’m hoping to put up photos of the three forts we visited yesterday, but for that I need a faster computer than I have today. Unrelated to any of this is the dance party music that is blaring from the park across the street. Which just started playing a techno version of “Caliornia Dreaming” which is very, very weird. Two months I’ve been here and this country continues to surprise me.

Also in unrelated news, I bought a beautiful white saree that has incredible embriodery on it and I’m going to have it made into a wedding dress!

Here is a photo of the qawwali w went to. The two guys with microphones are the ones who did most of the chanting and singing.

Here you can see the pigs eating garbage off the slimy, wet ground. The public urinal is in the back right side of the photo (the pink and white building).

Last week some housemates and I and Aunti-ji went to the local arts center which was holding a celebration for Teej, a local Rajasthani festival.

My housemates (Mariel, Chelsea, Shilpa) and Aunti-ji

They had food and a small baazaar. Kind of like fairs in the US.

Here you can see cots that people are sitting on–it’s common to see people sleeping on these everywhere: the sidewalk, in front of a restaurant, etc.

The trees were all done up with christmas lights!

gg

The Golden Temple and the India/Pakistan border

We just returned from a five-day whirlwind tour. Megan, Clare and I went to Amritsar, site of the Sikh’s most holy temple (called the Golden Temple). Because Amritsar is only about 20 or 30 minutes away from the India/Pakistan border, and because I like to give my father things to worry about, we went to the evening border closing ceremony while we were there. In fact, it was the first thing we did after checking into our hotel.

Both countries have bleacher seating on their own sides. The seating was on concrete risers that were hotter than…well…hotter than anything I’ve ever experienced. The hot seating combined with the weather meant that we all felt like we just might die of heat stroke. Anyway, India’s side was notably colorful, with people singing, waving balloons, and dancing in the streets (to Bollywood music, of course!).

Pakistan’s side, on the other hand, was quiet, still, and BORING. Tell me, which country knows how to party?

Soldiers from both sides (pictured below are India’s soldiers) would shout, stomp their feet, march swiftly to the border and back again, and just generally put a lot of very silly machismo on display. There was an MC leading the audience in cheers, and the Pakistan soldiers (who I couldn’t see very well) were doing something similar on their side, though clearly the Pakistan side was just not having as much fun. Or they weren’t allowed to have as much fun, I’m not sure which.

And finally, on our way out, this rather startling sight of Indian soldiers patrolling the border.

The next day, we visited the Golden temple. Both women and men must have their heads covered and shoes removed. Everyone takes a foot bath on their way into the temple (these are the large white rectangles that you see in the photo; they contain about 3 inches of water and everyone must walk through them before entering).

Inside, the temple is a brilliant gleaming gold, surrounded by a large pond of holy water and a white marble complex. It’s quite beautiful. The water has holy properties, and many people were bathing in it. There was even an opportunity for visitors to drink some of the holy water, but we declined.

Inside the golden temple itself were beautifully decorated rooms filled with the devout, chanting and singing and praying and meditating. It was a total contrast to the Muslim shrine we had visited earlier in the week (which I have yet to blog about, I know). At the Muslim shrine in Ajmer, people were pushy, loud, the the crowds literally crushed us (I had a hard time breathing, that’s how tight we were) and several women were groped (lousy people at the Muslim shrine! How dare they do that, ESPECIALLY in a holy place?). The Sikh Golden Temple, on the other hand, was peaceful, entrancing, and people were gentle, and kind. It was like night and day. We walked through the several stories of the main temple (where we can’t take pictures, unfortunately) and saw many old men with beards and the Sikh turban chanting and praying. On top of the temple I saw a lot of Indian people taking pictures, so I figured that pictures were okay and asked Megin to take one of me. Turns out pictures weren’t allowed up there. Oops.

After touring the temple and eating prasad (or rather, failing to eat it, as Megin’s prasad had a large, dead wasp in it), we sat under some shade and watched the crowds and meditated to the chanting. It was one of the highlights of the trip for me. I have never found it so easy to meditate. The experience was unbelievable–my mind felt expanded, and detached, and completely at peace. And we were not the only ones with this idea.

After this we went back to the hotel, where we hired a taxi to take us to Dharmshala. I know, it sounds expensive, a taxi for a 7-hour drive, but it really wasn’t that bad: about $80 (total) for the three of us. For our own personal taxi! We though it sounded great, until the hotel told us that “if anyone asks, you must say the car belongs to your friend.” WHY? We were very persistent in asking why, and they would not give us a straight answer. This gave us cause for alarm, so we called Matthew and asked him to keep track of us and make sure we got to Dharmshala okay. Turns out when we got there we had no phone reception and no way to call Matthew, so the poor man was in a bit of a panic until we finally located a public pay phone.

I will post about Dharmshala in a separate entry, as it really is another story entirely.

“Keep smiling you in Pushkar”

We’re in Pushkar, a small town in the middle of the desert of Rajasthan. Despite the desert-like nature of the place, it manages to have a very holy lake in the middle of it which draws thousands upon thousands of visitors a year. There are many ghats, stairs down into the holy water, where priests will do puja (worship) with you (for a donation, usually). Yesterday we walked through the main bazaar to the Brahma temple, where our teachers took us inside and we did something. (I don’t know what to call it. Puja?) We took off our shoes outside, left our bags with a teacher, the women covered their heads, and then we walked up the many many white marble steps. Apparently you’re not supposed to step on the last step before entering the temple–it’s inauspicious and everything here is about auspiciousness–but unfortunately I didn’t learn this until afterwords. Inside there is a small gazebo-type platform thingie, at the back of which is an icon of Lord Brahma (forgive me if I’m chosing the wrong words here). We offered orange flowers into one square-shaped bowl, and the man standing there gave us purple flowers that we took to the man standing in front of the image of Brahma. We gave him the purple flowers (presumably as an offering to Lord Brahma) and stood there for a minute. We then left the gazebo thingie and walked around it clockwise. I don’t know why we go clockwise. I asked a teacher and she said it’s just part of puja. Unfortunately you can’t take pictures of the temple, so I have no photos to paste, but it’s quite beautiful and it was really interesting to watch the different kinds of people in there. Pushkar is a big tourist town (so big with Israelis, in fact, that many signs are written in Hindi and in Hebrew) so there were a fair number of videshiis (foreigners) in the temple.

Our hotel is a government-run hotel which is okay. The outside is quite charming and beautiful, and the inside is sufficient. (My standards for Indian hotel rooms are still high when compared to my peers, I think.)

This morning I got up quite early and took a hike with some friends to the top of a small mountain where there is a temple to Savitri, one of the wives of Brahma. From down below it looks like quite a walk (which it was):

When we starting climbing up the hill I felt like I was heading off into an Indiana Jones movie:

And the best part: there were monkeys!! Langurs, the long-tailed monkeys. There was a family of them hanging out up there.

Of course we can’t take pictures of the temple itself, but we did get a nice photo of the view of Pushkar. You can see the holy lake in the background.

And, because I’m short on time, here are some random other pictures of Pushkar. Although the town is a bit touristy, it’s main bazaar is small and relatively free of traffic (particularly rickshaws) so it’s a rather pleasant walk through old twisty streets. One of my friends said that Pushkar looks the way a foreigner would expect India to look, and that’s probably true.

Jodhpur photos part II

Recap of the Jodhpur trip, continued:

Jodhpur was originally nicknamed the “Sun City,” because it’s high in the middle of the desert. Somewhere along the line it acquired the nickname “Blue City,” because apparently the old Brahmin families painted their houses indigo. (Why? Because it was expensive.) Now, apparently, blue dye is much cheaper than it used to be and anyone can paint their house. So a lot of people do! And it makes the city look pretty when viewed from the fort:

After the fort, we walked about a kilometer (a VERY hot kilometer) to Jaswant Thanda, a large and beautiful memorial to Jaswant Singh (1878-95). According to the guidebooks, he rid Jodhpur of bandits, built irrigation systems, and “boosted the economy.” Interpret that how you will. The building is pretty, though you had to take your shoes off (at the bottom of the steps you see in the photo) and walking around was a little bit hot on the feet. I didn’t stay up there long. Instead I sat under a tree (read: shade) and rested. I am old and boring like that. And it felt so good.

After the tomb, we took a very complicated rickshaw ride (which actually required no less than FIVE rickshaws) to get to lunch. I don’t remember this part very well, because I was delirious from heat and hunger, but I do know that the first rickshaw we rode in was called the “Love Guru.” And I also remember that we didn’t have lunch until after 4pm, which is nearly a cardinal sin in my book.

And finally, just to prove that there really ARE camels in the street, I managed to capture this photo from a rickshaw as we were heading to the bus stop to leave town. Please ignore the glaring bit of US commercialism just above the camel’s head.

A photo post for you!!

My new friend Megin has kindly loaned me her laptop for the afternoon (she has to register at the police station because she’s a suspicious character and because she has a year-long visa), so I transferred some photos to my memory stick so’s I can upload them for your viewing pleasure. (p.s. She’s really not a suspicious character.)

Also, OH MY GOSH, I just discovered an ice cream/coffee shop with free wireless. And I ordered a chocolate milkshake thing with chocolate ice cream in it (barfi ke bina–without ice, as frozen water can still contain stomach bugs) and it is a slice of pure heaven. Also, it’s air conditioned. Things are looking up! Chocolate ice cream, wireless, air conditioning. Awesome.

Here are some photos. I know they’re not all that good, I’ve been a little shy about taking pictures, as I get mocked nearly every time I do (by Indian men, generally–they seem to think that the more they hoot, holler, and make fun of me, the more likely I am to sleep with them. I wish my Hindi skills were good enough to tell them to buzz off. I’ll have to ask about that. The attention is seriously exhausting).

First, there are an abundance of spiritual/religious symbols: on houses, buildings, cars, everywhere.

There are people everywhere pushing and pulling their fruit carts, selling mangoes and bananas and watermelon and canteloupe. In the background you can see the yellow and black auto-rickshaws which remind me of little beetles (the insects, not the car brand).

Some sights from the Bapu market in the old city:

Pictures from the shoe-wallah (the second one is me, my friend Kirsten who is applying to MIT for grad school, and the shoe-wallah):

ICE CREAM (Donovan, from UW- Madison, me, Megin)

The daughter of our tailor. This little girl is adorable, and her only English knowledge is the phrase, “Nice suit!”

Pigs in the gutter on the way to school today. In the second photo: piglets! I still haven’t succeeded at taking pictures of any cows…

Finally, a view of where I’m staying. I’m currently in the room with the curtains closed, but I’ll be moving to a different room today or tomorrow. Tonight I’ll go up on the roof and take some photos of the view. We can see the old fort, and the hills, and some of the city from up there. All I need is a lawn chair!