Behind the Taj

We spent 12 hours in Agra on a Friday that also happened to be Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday.  The Taj Mahal, really the only reason to go to Agra, is closed on Fridays, and in observance of Gandhi’s birthday it was a dry day.  Oops.  Luckily we found a fella by the name of Vijay Singh, auto-rickshaw driver extraordinaire, to show us around town and take us to the super-ultra-secret “backside” of the Taj that no one else knows about…  No one else knows about it, right Vijay?

Behind the Taj

How I became best friends with Jason Schwartzman

Jodphur is another one of those color coordinated Rajasthani cities.  Under the shadow of massive Meherengarh Fort there used to be a Brahmin colony and the Brahmins identified their small district by painting all the buildings with indigo and apparently the trend caught.  All around the fort, at the heart of the old city, Jodhpur lives up to its name: the blue city.  But enough boring history…

Jodhpur from Meherengarh

After a long love affair with India’s red-est red tape laden bureaucracy, Indian Railways, we managed to cancel all our train tickets and actually got all the money back, even for the train to Jodphur which, by the time I finished running around collecting all the requisite stamps and signatures and stamped signatures and signed stamps, we had already missed anyway.  We had decided to drive through Rajasthan because, much like Maine, you can’t get there from here.

The continuing Hanuman Temple saga, maniacal laugh-offs, and tailors from hell in Pushkar

dye for sale, Pushkar

In order that you might better appreciate the second installment of my adventures with the monkey god, BFF of Ram and Sita, and inspiration for the mantra, “no toilet, no shower, Hanuman power for 24 hour,” I should probably bestow on you the first installment, as that’s  usually how these things work – sequential order and all that.  I would have written about it earlier, of course, but I was tied up in a legal battle with Warner Bros. who wanted to option the story and wouldn’t let me publish it separately, but they eventually relented when they realized it wasn’t much of a story anyway.

Toward the end of my little jaunt through the Jaipur, the Pink City, I was brought high up onto a wooded hill full of exotic things, like peacocks and little shrines and the trash people threw out their windows as they’d driven to past.  In the crotch of a pair of steep mountain peaks was a weathered and ancient looking compound and a path up into the pass.  This was the monkey temple, I was told, and I’d better watch out or the monkeys – which were everywhere – would steel my stuff.

Sherpas, honeymooners, and a zombie dog

cable-car to "uptown" Mussoorie

I don’t know if this is a strictly Himalayan thing, but an unfortunate element of my two weeks in the hill has been the omnipresence of Celine Dion.  I escaped Rishikesh and the otherwise friendly guys at the Oasis Café who’d been tormenting me with that music, only to find that the prevailing café music in Mussoorie is much in the same vein, with the additional annoyance of Britney Spears.  In fact, as I began writing this in a Mussoorie restaurant I was listening to Dion belt out “have you ever been so in looooooooooooooove!”

Mussoorie, Queen of the Hill, perched at between 2000 and 2500 meters – depending on which part of town you’re in – is a favorite spot for Indian honeymooners and is, I’m sorry to say, a very boring place.

There are some great views – of the Doon Valley to the south and into the lower Himalaya to the north – but views can’t hold your attention for long if you’ve got nothing to do.  There is a Tibetan market, made up of pop-up tables and tarp shades, and there are various stores with Himalayan handicrafts, textiles, and garments.  It’s a good place to get a sweater, I guess.

The highlights: a dozen or so little sidewalk bakeries full of delicious sweets and delivering diabetes to many a sweet-toothed vacationer; a scenic road around the backside of the peak; Sherpas all over the place, sporting traditional Himalayan dress and carrying 10 times their body weight in the most random paraphernalia; the view, as mentioned; and a zombie dog!

Rishikesh

Statue of Shiva on the Ganges, Ram Jhula

“Rishikesh isn’t really India.”

So says the (very attractive) Italian yoga instructor who resides in the adjacent room.  She’s been in India for a month, but hasn’t actually been outside of Rishikesh, so I’m inclined to think I know more than she does.

Actually, Rishikesh isn’t really Rishikesh.  When people refer to Rishikesh, they aren’t really talking about the town of Rishikesh which is noisy, crowded, and uninteresting.  What Rishikesh means to most people is a set of enclaves a few kilometers north which take their names from the jhulas, or suspension bridges, they’ve grown up around.  These enclaves are Ram Jhula and Laxman Jhula (where I’m staying).  Both are split into east and west sides by the Ganges.

On the road to (and from) Khajuraho

Kama Sutra carvings on the facade of a Khajuraho temple

85 incredibly ornate temples were built in Khajuraho, a location of no great importance at the time of their construction, and they were built in only 100 years – between approx. 950 AD and 1050 AD.  The temples were abandoned as a result of tribal invasions and the area was reclaimed by the jungle until it was rediscovered by the British in the late 1800s.

Not all of the temples have survived, but today the Western temple group is a World Heritage Site (those seem to be very common in India).  The other two temple groups, East and South, are protected areas, their upkeep overseen by the Madhya Pradesh government.

The temples are perhaps most famous for their depictions of Kama Sutra scenes, and these were what we set out after last Thursday.

Snaps

People in India are constantly asking to take my picture (or our picture when I’m traveling with Kaitlin).  They call pictures ‘snaps’ here, in case you were wondering.  I’m sure it’s been gnawing at you late at night when you can’t sleep: just what do people in India call photos anyway!  Well, now you know.

Anyway, as I was saying the snap thing is erring on the obsessive side and I’ve decided to retaliate by ‘snapping’ back.  Here are a few of the results from Gwalior Fort today:

More to come, you can be sure…