Category: India

Nestled in the Himalayan foothills, 7,467 feet above sea level and the capital of Himachal Pradesh, we arrived after a fairly long drive over a short distance travelling through the switched back roads with plunging mountainside cliffs to a city hugging the foothills of the Himalayas. It is much cooler here and the air is crisp and clean. The town boasts a 7 km vehicle free “Mall” which runs along the ridge that the city is built upon both above and below the ridge. Joyce is under the weather today so I headed off and walked my 10,000 + steps and checked out the mall. Clean, wide paved boulevard and vehicle free it reminded me of a Swiss mountain village and is such a difference between the north and south of the India we have seen so far.

Tomorrow we head to the town of Kullu in the Kullu Valley of the Himalayas but we’ll first have a short stop at Viceregal Lodge, the official summer residence of British viceroys. Completed in 1888 the entire Indian subcontinent was ruled from here for just over a half a year every year from April to October, coincidentally the sweltering months on the lower plains.

Yesterday we spent a leisurely day checking out some of the sites this city has to offer and also learning a little history behind the construction of this first planned city in India.

We first visited the Zakir Hussain Rose Garden. Spread over 30 acres it boasts over 50,000 rose bushes comprising 1600 different species and is the largest such garden in Asia. It isn’t the best time of year to visit so there weren’t many blooms but it was easy to imagine how beautiful it would be during the right season. So, no pics of the garden.

Our next stop was something we have never seen before and is a special highlight compared to all of the temples, castles and ruins we’ve seen to date.

The Nek Chand Rock Garden. Wow!

But here is where a little more history comes into play on the building of Chandigarh city.

Nek had a vision to use the stones, debris and other discarded junk that was left over from the destruction of over 50 villages to make way for the new city of Chandigarh.

The destruction of over 50 villages! Not so good.

We’ve seen this elsewhere in the world and people probably don’t realise what may have happened to the local village people to make this “fine example of a planned city”.

Chandigarh is beautiful but beneath there is a story and I’m sure there was much misery and disruption that you do not read or hear about to make it the city that it is today.

The Rock Garden was surreal and as mentioned earlier, something we have never seen before and something very special. The talent of its creator is inspirational. Everything from old electrical plug outlets, broken porcelain squatter toilets, bangles, rocks, glass, and everything under the sun made up this amazing labyrinth of walled pathways, ancient forts, castles, waterfalls, villages, people and animals. How to describe?  (Check Thesaurus for more descriptive words).

This is the Indian city every city in India wishes it was. The first planned city in India, it was designed by a Swiss architect in 1950 and incorporates large tree-lined boulevards, pedestrian friendly walkways, traffic lights, yes, traffic lights, parks and a first so far, no cows roaming through traffic and a very welcome horn free (to some extent) silence and clean air. We have a great hotel with a very cool rooftop terrace/restaurant/bar/live music venue. It is quite chilly outside but we have a cozy comfortable couch in the corner and the music should start shortly.  Chandigarh is the capital of both Punjab and Maryana states and it was a comfortable 4 1/2 hour drive north of Delhi on a very good three lane each way highway. What a treat! We have a driver, Jaspul “just call me Paul” who speaks and understands English and knows the territory. Before we reached town he was on the phone with a travel agent friend, told him our hotel expectations and voila, we got a great room at a good hotel at a nicely discounted price. We like this guy! Tomorrow we have a leisurely breakfast (included in the room price) and then check out the sites the city has to offer. Until then we’ll nibble on some excellent aloo jeera, veg noodles and gobhi mushlam with some cold Kingfisher beer to wash it all down.

After 3 nights in Varanasi we flew to Delhi and arrived last night. We have today/tonight to get organized and then we depart tomorrow morning for what we expect to be a 14-16 day tour by car and driver through the states of Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and a short jaunt into southern Kashmir. We originally considered going further north but the weather is still very cold, rainy and snowy in some areas and we’re not prepared to do this. Our schedule and route is flexible but we anticipate ending our journey through India and heading off to Myanmar/Southeast Asia around February 20th. Below is our intended route barring any unforseen circumstances. It took all day to figure out but here it is in my hand drawn routing. I could have used Google but that wouldn’t be any fun and much less frustrating trying to get it right.

Delhi – Chandigarh – Kufri – Kullu – Manali – Daramshala – Dalhousie – Jammuu – Amritsar. At this point we will either fly from Amritsar to Delhi or just bite the bullet  and drive back to Delhi via Chandigarh but we will most likely fly to Delhi, stay at a nice hotel near the airport and then fly to Bangkok the next day. Stay tuned, much more to follow.

The holiest place in India. An amazing scene from a 6,000 year old city nestled along the holy Ganga River. The Ganges as it is called by those from the outside, this river dissolves the bones and ashes of the devout Hindu followers.

The Manakarnika Ghats on the western banks of the Ganges is the ceremonial funeral pyre where the loved and deceased are cremated on a pyre of various types of wood their ashes then spread into the holy river. From the ashes any gold or other precious metals or stones are filtered out by the pyre attendants. The ash cleaners are considered lower caste and this is their payment for looking after the ashes. There is a strict policy when it comes to cremating your loved ones. First, women are not allowed to attend due to the crying and sobbing that comes with a loved ones death and the sadness is believed to bring bad luck to the souls passage into eternity. Also in years past and now against the law women would throw themselves on their husband’s pyres, a ritual known as self-immolation. If a father dies his oldest son attends to the cremation. If a mother dies her husband lights the fire, if a widow, her youngest son attends to the cremation. If there were no sons then a brother of one side or the other would attend. There are five situations where cremation will not occur. If a woman is pregnant, if a child is under 12 years old, if you died from a venomous snake bite, if you died from the pox or if you had leprosy. In these cases the bodies are tied to and weighted down with heavy rocks and the bodies are taken by boat to the middle of the Ganges and thrown over and sunk. The pyres are lit from a fire called the Shiva fires that legend says was lit 3,500 years ago and has been burning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and has never been extinguished. Hindus believe that the banks of the Ganges at the holy city of Varanasi is the most sacred place on earth to die and some 300 people are cremated at the site everyday to liberate their souls and break the cycle of death and rebirth and reach nirvana. There are many situations where a body is not cremated, poor and unable to afford the cost of wood etc. where bodies are essentially dumped into the river, un-weighted and free to drift to the shores. We didn’t witness any of this but heard the stories of bloated bodies washing ashore and being eaten by the hundreds of stray dogs that live along the banks. The ritual of the cremation is too long to describe so best to do a quick Google for some fascinating background on this.

Manakarnika Ghat

At the Southern end of the ghats,the Harichandra Ghat serves a different clientele and for a different reason. Suicides, murders, unconfirmed deaths etc. requires the investigation of the local coroner and after several days the bodies can become shall we say, quite rich in smell so for the less than a day or two old bodies wood is used and for the few days older an electric crematorium is used.  From what we could see rowing past on a boat on the river there is no ceremony and no body coverings. Just the corpse laying upon the wooden pyre with a few logs on top. Wood cremation takes about 3-4 hours, electric about 45 minutes thus eliminating the addition of burning flesh smoke to the already smokey and air polluted city, which brings me to why the other cremation ghat doesn’t surprisingly smell of burning flesh and what keeps the fire burning hot. Well, copious amounts of incense, sandalwood (which is very expensive) herbs, perfumes and other nice smelling stuff keeps the smell at bay. It actually smells quite nice as you watch the pyre burn and hearing the skull crack after about 15 minutes indicating the soul has left the body but it is the butter, ghee, liquefied butter that is poured over the cloth wrapped corpse that gives that little bit of extra fuel needed to get the job done. In the hope that I’m not sounding sacrilegious I wonder where the saying “buttering somebody up” comes from?

Harichandra Ghat

Varanasi is a one of a kind place. 40% Muslim, 60% Hindu. The Muslim call to prayer echoes throughout the city five times a day, the Hindu chanting and drumming and evening ceremonies resonate throughout in between. The narrow alleyways of the old city buzz with a semi laid back activity of a very hard existence while the new city bursts with an unimaginable web and tangle of life on the edge of the holiest river and city in the world.

Varanasi sums up our existence revealing all that is good and bad and also forces us to see not only how far we have come but how far we still have to go. Varanasi is known as the City of Life and the City of death, where Karma and Nirvana serve their purpose very well.

It was tough to break away from Varanasi but we did manage to take a 1/2 day trip to nearby Sarnath, the site where Buddha preached his first message of the middle way to nirvana after he achieved enlightenment. Many of the ruins date back to the 3rd century BC and Sarnath is one of four sites pilgrims are encouraged to visit at least once in their lifetime.

 

Yesterday and another long drive brought us to the town of Khajraho, a town on the beaten tourist path but surprisingly empty of tourists. We’re told tourism is way down this year and some blame the fact that India is no longer as inexpensive as it used to be while others blame world turmoil. Whatever the reason there were no crowds and the World Heritage designated sights were spell binding. But first, a quick off subject detour…

Today is day 16 of our originally planned 21 day tour of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. We have driven just over 3,000 km’s of sometimes good roads, most times very bad roads and at all times very stressful driving conditions.

You don’t drive in India, you survive the drive in India.

There are no rules of the road.

Motorcycles, trucks and everything in between drive on the wrong side of the road with near head on collisions every few minutes being the norm. There are constant close calls with cows, dogs, goats, people and monkeys. There are squashed dogs littering the highways and surprisingly we haven’s seen one accident yet however we unfortunately did see a Macaque monkey get hit by a tuk tuk and the sad sight of the after effects will stick with us for some time.

Along with all of this is the incessant honking. It is unbelievable and it really rubs you after a while!

Everything combined adds up to a certain level of stress so by the end of the day we decided to fly to Varanasi tomorrow instead of driving.

We each had an Ayurveda massage this afternoon after visiting the incredible temples of Khajraho.

We’ll spend three nights in Varanasi and then fly back to Delhi on the 29th so we cut 2 days from our original plan and at least another 27 hours of driving however there will be many more hours of driving and new adventures starting next week when we head north into Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir.

We stayed at a great hotel in Khajraho, Hotel Isabel Palace, about 1 km from town and set off the main road and set beside some large fields of wheat.

Our room was spacious and clean and the bed was one of the most comfortable we’ve had so far. The staff was excellent, the view from the terrace restaurant was a sunset photographer’s delight and the food was always fresh.

Ravindran the owner took great care of us. He along with the rest of the staff were wonderful. We highly recommend this hotel. We were treated wonderfully.

The temples of Khajraho

Adinath Temple (Jain temple)

Orchha is a beautiful little gem way off the beaten tourist path. We arrived on the 23rd and were greeted by a clean, laid-back and hassle free town situated on the Betwa River, one of the three cleanest rivers in India.

Not yet spoiled by tourism, although they could use a little more publicity, the town is host to a supreme display of Mughal-influenced Rajput architecture. Situated in the Bundelkhand region the town faces a large forest reserve on one side of the river and the fortified complex of the Raj Mahal and Jehangir Mahal located on a small river island connected by a narrow granite bridge. On the bridge children fish with magnets.People throw coins into the river for good luck as they pass over the old granite bridge and the kids get some of the coins by diving and setting the coins up for their magnet friends to retrieve. Other temples can be found throughout town but the soaring spires of the Chaturbhuj Temple steals the show.

We stayed at the Bundelkhand Riverside Hotel which is owned by the grandson of Orchha’s last king. We had a beautiful room overlooking the river and relaxed with a drink surrounded by gardens as we de-stressed from another long drive.

The following morning we hired a guide and set out to view some of the sites this quaint little town had to offer.The artistry painted with mineral and vegetable bases last forever and and never fade. The art tells the story of the life of the Hindu history, Rama, Vishnu, Krishna and the incarnations. There is so much history and the 500 year old art is incredible. We are so fortunate to see this.

Raj Mahal and Jahengir Mahal

The Cenotaphs of Orchha

Agra and the Taj Mahal go hand in hand and is often the first or second city many tourists see. Most fly into Delhi and either do a day trip to Agra or spend one night in Agra so they can beat the crowds and see the Taj at sunrise. Delhi, for its size is actually quite nice with lots of tree-lined and well manicured boulevards. There are definitely many bad areas but our first impression over all was positive. We arrived into Agra on Monday January 22nd to one of the ugliest, dirty, smelly and congested cities we have seen in India to date. Fortunately this wasn’t a “first impressions of India” for us but for those who it was, well I’m sure they were in for a very big surprise. The Taj is magnificent and that’s all Agra has to offer. Our hotel, (the Ganga Ratan, don’t ever stay there) was disgusting with mice running around the bar area and one very large mouse or small rat making a quick exit when we entered our room. We nearly gagged all night long smelling the putrid polluted air and then dealt with the worst management you can imagine over our breakfast not being included because we didn’t book through a hotel booking web site. Anyway, crappy place with an amazing Mahal.

 

We arrived in Jaipur on Saturday the 20th.

Known as the “pink City”, Jaipur is the largest city in Rajasthan and is the 10th most populous city in India. The city is made up of the walled “Old City” and the newer city that expanded outside of the walls.

Within the walls of the Old City the law still dictates that all buildings be painted pink making this interesting in the sense that most of the buildings are pink but although alike in colour there is still an interesting diversity that is not drowned out by the sameness of colour.  Hope this makes sense.

Jaipur also has cleaner air than most if not all of its smaller counterparts and we think this can be credited to the wide use of electric tuk tuks versus the air spoiling 2-stroke engine smoke belching motorized tuk tuks. There may still be some hope for these smog filled Indian cities.

We stayed at a great budget hotel, Hotel Sweet Dream, close to the city palace with a beautiful rooftop terrace with a water feature any water feature loving person would want. The service by primarily older male staff was great, The food was excellent and the beer was cold and reasonably priced.

A family group was on the terrace celebrating their daughters 5th birthday and out of nowhere the young girl came over to our table and offered us birthday cake. There was a two piece band playing Indian music and that combined with the cake made our evening complete.

We arrived in Jaipur mid afternoon so we visited the City Palace and left the remaining sight-seeing for the next day when we took an old original pedal powered rickshaw to the palace and the poor old bugger doing the pedalling was probably in his forties but looked like he was 85.

We had to reassure ourselves that this is how he makes his living and it is a very good thing that both of us have lost a fair bit of weight over the past 8 months so hopefully he wouldn’t drop dead before getting us to our destination.

We were told not to pay more than 20-30 rupees. We gave him 100 rupees.

The City Palace is a blend of Rajasthani and Mughal architecture originally built by Jai Singh II but enlarged and adapted over the centuries. The palace is private and is still in use by the current 18 year old Maharajah and the entrance fee and on-site curio shops and we assume are used to help feed the rich and send the young King to college in London. Oh, and also to help maintain the castle. Limited pictures because photos weren’t permitted inside.

City Palace 

Sunday morning we had our driver take us up to Amber Fort, a beautiful example of Rajput architecture that rises above the city on a rocky mountainside. Amber was the former capital of Jaipur state and the construction of the fort began in 1592 and houses an extensive palace complex built from pale yellow and pink sandstone and white marble.

Amber Fort

Our next stop was Jaigarh, rising high above Amber Fort and built in 1726. The walls surrounding he fort are over 20 km in circumference and offers extraordinary views of the Amber and Jaipur 11 km’s away.  After Jaigarh we made a pit stop to photograph Jal Mahal, a water palace in the middle of Man Sagar (lake) before heading to Galta Jai, AKA the “Monkey Temple”.

Jaigarh and Jal Mahal

After several attempts to find Galta, our driver who has thus far assured us he knows all the spots and how to get there and only ever seems to answer “yes sir” whether it is a question, statement or observation (there will be a section soon on our experience driving with “yes sir” for thousands of km’s), we found the parking lot in front of the small, very steep road that supposedly leads to the monkey temple.

At the parking lot several stands sold peanuts which we had read somewhere will help keep the pesky simians at bay so I bought a big bag although I only wanted to get a small bag but Joyce vehemently stressed that it will save our bacon when faced with the maniacal macaques that would confront us.

Loaded up with peanuts we proceeded to get a good glute workout heading toward what was supposedly on a National Geographic special on the National geographic channel that aired some time ago.

Not more than 10 minutes into our climb we encountered some of the holy hairy beasts guarding the route and within a matter of seconds, a large one spotted me holding a big bag, yes a big bag of nuts and proceeded to attack me.

I looked left, he moved right and did a quick switch and he proceeded to climb up my legs and then my back while, fruitlessly I might add, trying to grab my nuts.

I swung my bag and yelled and the monkey backed off knowing not to screw with me. I looked at Joyce with a slightly evil eye and we proceeded un-accosted for the next 1/2 hour of up-hill thigh burning hell.

We reached a fork in the road. You know the story, the intrepid traveller takes the road less travelled so we turned right eyeing high upon the mountain top what must be the famous Monkey Temple. Upon reaching the temple there was a sign. “Sun Temple”.

There were no monkeys around, there was some restoration work going on and a few old ladies were sitting around the entrance chatting and drinking chai.

Hello. Is this the monkey temple? Yes? No? Any monkeys? No. Hmm..Where are they? In the back of the mountains they said so we descended the precipice, slight exaggeration, and found our way to the other direction, turn left.

So now we are apparently looking at the monkey temple, about 750 feet below us but with one big hill in between which means a descent of 750 feet and then an ascent of 740 feet before another 750 foot descent. Damn. What to do but do it!

As we reached the second valley we approached what looks like a small temple compound and not many monkeys and we of course were approached by a temple priest with an eye for naive foreigners. He must show us his temple and bless us and tell us they rely on donations and yes this is the entrance to the monkey temple and we ask why are there only one pair of shoes at the entrance when we saw several tourists hiking down in front of us and we realized, duped again by a holy one.

We removed our shoes and were respectful and we respectfully declined his blessing and dropped 100 rupees into his scam tray, sorry, and then proceeded to get ripped off at the real entrance to the temple. 50 rupees for a camera, 150 rupees for a video camera, no charge for an iPhone which takes great video and photos and they can be posted on FB instantly if you have 4G on your phone.

This is a very big complaint we have in India so far. No charge for a smart phone, a small charge for a camera and a huge charge for a video camera. It doesn’t make sense this day and age.

Finally we turn a corner after the entrance and we are confronted with a sight out of sci-fi heaven. Wow! Narrow cliffs surrounding water pools, monkeys, ghost town temples further down. A very cool sight and not one monkey gave me a hard time or tried to steal the remaining nuts I had. Sure, a few eyed my bag of peanuts so I proactively threw a few to them but aside from the one earlier non temple monkey who doesn’t know the meaning Karma all was calm and the monkeys were well behaved.

Galta, the Monkey Temple

This is great. We’re almost caught up but it is still “yesterday we arrived at” etc.

Yesterday we drove from Ranakpur, backtracking part way towards Jodhpur and then headed East to Pushkar, a prominent Hindu pilgrimage town where devout Hindus should visit at least once in their lifetime. The town curls around a holy lake which is also surrounded by 52 bathing ghats where the pilgrims bathe in the sacred waters. We arrived around 3:00 pm, found a nice hotel and decided to relax and update the blog with the plan being to sleep in and tour around the sacred waters of Pushkar today!! Our first stop was to take the ropeway to the hilltop Saraswati Mata Temple. This is a very small temple with some resident Southern plains grey langurs and fantastic views of the edge of the Western Desert Plains and to the East the Aravalli mountains. Arriving back to the base safely, we headed over to town and made our way to the lakes edge just in time to be de-shoed, sat down at the lakes edge by a fly by night guru and blessed through a series of chants, hand washing, more chants, throw a flower into the water, more chants, hold a coconut and chant and finally get a red bindi smudge on our forehead before saying goodbye to 1,000 rupees that will definitely go to the local heritage fund and help save all the starving children and teach everyone to read and the bindi combined with the red cotton string wrapped around our hand will fend off any further gurus wanting to bless us and ask for money. We were so blessed to experience this. All kidding aside it was a serious ceremony meant to bring good karma to us and our loved ones and also grant us a wish. It was actually pretty cool and we weren’t bothered by anyone the rest of the day….except of course once we left the lake side.

We stayed at the Puskar Fort Hotel, a very nice property a few km’s from town because (a) they serve alcohol as it is not allowed in Pushkar proper and (b) it is a really nice quiet resort for a very decent price. Just outside of the rear hotel gates is a Kalbeliya village, known as gypsies in the lower caste system they live in make shift tents, tend to their cattle and camels and live a semi nomadic desert existence. The Bopa are another group in the area and are known for their music and fire dance shows.