Elsien's Traveblogue

I've now left Rajastan, a beautiful but touristy place with some nice countryside, lots of Rajput forts on hills, overlooking towns with a palace or two, or three, tourist streets with tourist shops and tourist guesthouses, a scruffy Old Town with the usual fruit and vegetable market, saree stalls, household stuff and kids' clothes and sometimes a newer area or a shanty town. I cannot be 100% sure as I only went to Jaipur, the Pink City, although I'd say the colour was more burnt orange, and Udaipur, with Lake Palaces, very pretty.
I liked Jaipur, although lots of people don't, but I steered clear of the tourist shops and rickshaw wallahs - I can say no in three dozen different ways now. Instead I walked for miles up the hills above to the old forts and temples. I struck especially lucky with the Monkey Shrine in Jaipur: it was a special day / week / month and dozens of women were going up there as well, singing, dancing, half naked, stripped down to their petticoats, then put on dry sarees they'd been carrying in bags on their heads and had a picknick and did some more singing, drum banging and dancing. The walks up to the forts were lovely, not a tourist in sight: they were all taken by road to tourist shops by pushy rickshaw drivers. You have to like walking, mind, and you may deduce from this that my legs aren't letting me down.
Udaipur is built around some artificial lakes with some gorgeous palaces - one is an expensive hotel you can only get to if you are staying there. James Bond did, for the filming of Octopussy there. Another is the current Maharajah's residence who has opened part of his palace to the public - it's really fabulous with beautiful views of the lake and the hotel palace. I stayed in the guesthouse of a Dutch woman from Wageningen who'd married a tourist rickshaw wallah - some women like them or maybe she didn't know how to say no - a really nice place, a mini palace, under the walls of the Maharajah's palace. In the evening you could see and hear the sound and light from her rooftop terrace.
I skipped the other Rajastan tourist cities (for the moment, at least) as from the book and travellers' tales they sound like more of the same, but may come back later on or on a next trip, I do like Rajastan. Also, it had got cold at night, although still glorious by day.
I was in a hurry to make my way down to Diu, an ex-Portuguese island off the coast of Gujerat for Christmas, as I have this (crazy?) idea that I want to celebrate Christmas somewhere with some Christian traces, but not Goa, too busy, expensive and touristy at this time of year. There's a working Catholic church here with Mass in Portuguese, apparently, not found it yet, but I've heard the church bells, too tinny to drown out the muezzin or the recorded Hindu prayers, but church bells even so. It is also a duty-free enclave where I might be able to find a bottle of red wine for Christmas dinner. Booze is scarce or expensive or even foul, like Indian made whisky, in most of the country I've visited so far. Gujerat is completely dry and I can count the Indian Kingfishers I've had so far on my fingers. There's also beaches here and swimmable Arabian Sea, what more do I want?
To get to Diu I had to stop off at Ahmedabad - and this bit is only for those of you reading these e-mails to see where NOT to go - which is apparently nicknamed the Manchester of India - they think it's a compliment, sorry Mancunians! It does bear similarities to the old, gritty, dirty, smoggy , industrial city Manchester used to be (Pax, Mancunians), but Manchester has improved no end (that better?) and Ahmedabad still has a long way to go. They've greened up the tuk-tuks, major air and noise polluters, and some of the buses, but the historical buildings, lots of interesting mosques, are still grimy, falling to pieces and impossible to find among the non-historical, grimy and falling to pieces buildings. There's a newer part of the city which looks like Ahmedabad is on the up. I did have some really good curries here though.
From Ahmedabad a 10 1/2 hour bus-ride to Diu. Some pretty countryside and lots of cottonfields. The guesthouse was another piece of fabrication from the Rough Guide - Lonely Planet is even worse: instead of the 'friendly atmosphere' in the Jay Shankar Guesthouse I was met with an almost Dickensian scene of father in filthy vest hawking his lungs out in filthy kitchen, slovenly mother in filthy saree serving disgusting curry floating in ghee, two little boys of maybe 8 and 10 serving noisy, Indian drunks their tots of foul Indian whisky. I won't be having my Christmas dinner here, don't you worry.
It looks better this morning in the daylight especially after some (instant) coffee on the roof terrace. The sun is shining, there's a sea-breeze, lots of trees and birds cawing.
I'll go and see if the Portuguese have left traces of real coffee anywhere.
Wish you all a very Merry Christmas and think of me with my bottle of Red wine on the beach listening to the tinny churchbells and the Messiah on my IP3 player!

Am back in Jaipur for a night, after spending the last 8 or 9 days (lost track of time) in a small Indian village with a large Indian family ....
By a pure stroke of luck I found myself adopted by this family in Rajastan and got involved in the weddings of two of the many nephews, Rinku and Bablu. I've attended almost all of the wedding ceremonies, and there are lots of them: exchanges of 'contracts' , gifts and dowry, blessings (too many ceremonies to remember, all involving burning cowdung and lots of the red stuff), the actual wedding do's in the grooms' town, Phulera, and also in the brides' places, one of them even further away, so the whole wedding party of more than 50 people got on the train for 14 hours to have the wedding and pick up the bride. There was a lot of singing, drumming and dancing, mainly by the women and dancing, especially by me: like in the Pacific, my dancing style seems to go down well with the locals, especially with old crones and small children, and I've become a veritable Dancing Queen. Of course lots of eating as well, but more family meals tham banquets. I've become quite Indianified: can now eat even the sloppiest currie with the fingers of my right hand only, can do the other thing with my left hand when I ran out of toilet paper (none to be had in Phulere) - have had my hands henna-painted, have been press-ganged into buying and wearing a saree and lots of bangles for the actual weddings, sky-blue, much admired by all, but find that sitting cross-legged on hard stone floors for hours on end still rather a strain on my poor legs and back, but it's getting better. I can also not blow my nose with my fingers! (No tissues either! I've been using old newspaper - ouch!)
I've eaten all kinds of food I've never had in Indian restaurants anywhere and enjoy it immensely. My stomach and intestines only protest when they get overloaded as too much gets pressed on to my plate which I cannot refuse. I impressed them all by munching a raw green chilli and have become addicted to sweet, milky Indian masala tea, so I am looking forward to be 'on the road' again and loose all those extra pounds I've piled back on.
I've learnt ever such a lot about Indian family life as well as women's lot here. I've made friends with one of the brides, a young woman who still rather looks and sounds like a little girl although she's 21 and has done 2 1/1 years of College, a commerce course. I hope it'll come in useful one day as she's abandoned it to get married and now, as a new wife, she cannot venture out of her room on her own, only to go to the bathroom. She has to keep her face almost completely covered and will be kept in semi-purdah for at least a few weeks, after which she will become another housework-slave with a couple of kids very soon. Her new husband, on the other hand, appeared at the second wedding, while she was left at home with an auntie she didn't know, and got completely drunk (the new husband, not auntie). It was of course an arranged marriage, but she told me that she had more or less fallen in love with the picture she'd been sent and when she first met him, really, really liked him. She did seem quite smitten and told me she was "really happy", but I didn't dare ask her whether they "did it" on their wedding night and how she felt about him coming home drunk on their second night! Her sister-in-law, married for some 5 years is constantly in tears as she toils with a difficult small baby and total lack of husband support - mind you, she doesn't do anything else either. The youngest daughter, 27 and still unmarried runs a lot of the household, but she will get married next year, so these two will have to pull their weight as Mama-ji mainly sits on her large bottom, doing a bit of curry stirring - there is a maid as well.
While I haven't done any sightseeing since Jaipur, the Pink City in Rajastan, this has been much more interesting. I have now fled back to Jaipur for a night with semi-Western comforts at Maggie's guesthouse: a sit-down toilet with toiletpaper, hot water, a bed, chairs and a cold beer!
More later - I have to re-think my itinerary!

Amritsar is not typically Indian. It's the centre of the Sikh religion - the (in)famous Golden Temple is here, the scene of the massacre of hundreds of unarmed protesters in 1919 that started Gandhi's campaign of civil disobedience. We saw the place, which is now a memorial garden, very moving. The Golden Temple itself is a marvel. It's truly golden, in the middle of a square artificial lake and surrounded by imposing, Mughal-style, symmetrical white buildings, the gurdwaras, where pilgrims can stay. You can walk around the lake and temple, barefoot of course, on the cold marble, and see and hear the 24-hour chanting of the Holy Book inside the Golden Temple. It's very musical, although decidedly un-western. You can also eat for free and stay in the gurdwara for a donation, which I wanted to do, but my travel companion (who really is a bit of a wimp!) was not keen, so we compromised and stayed in a really nice place instead, overlooking the temple complex, within earshot of the singing.The Golden Temple is amazing in the changing light, so we looked again at it at dusk, when the pink light played on the gold of the temple and the white of the gurdwaras and the marble floor (lyrical, eh?) and again at night, when it was illuminated. In between we walked around the Old City, enjoying the fact that there were colourful women everywhere: the difference with Pakistan is marked. Until you have experienced a world where women are kept out of the public eye and behind veils, you cannot imagine what a diffrence it makes when we are allowed equal(ish) footing again. We'd already seen it at the border. There is only 1 landcrossing between India and Pakistan at the moment and when the border is closed each day, there is a closing cremony where both sides seem to perform the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, to the delight of the massive audiences on both sides. On the Indian side girls were dancing in sarees, shalwar kameez (but no head scarf) or jeans, whereas on the Pakistani side the women were sedately huddled together, separated from the menfolk, most heavily veiled. It is really lovely to be out of this male-dominated society, interesting as Pakistan was. Islam really seems to put a heavy and unplasant stamp on that society. The men seem to have it all, but they don't know what they are missing by keeping their women in purdah. I've not seen any women in black now for days, what a relief.We've also had some delicious food, lots of vegetables (Sikhs are vegetarians), which is nice after the heavily meat-based cuisine of Pakistan: mutton, chicken, mutton, chicken, mutton, chicken ...

After 6 weeks of Islam, a few days of Sikhism and several weeks of Hinduism still to come, I'm now in the middle of Tibetan Buddhism in Dharamsala, the residence of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile. I met the D.L. himself yesterday. He is teaching a course here at the moment and he shook my hand on the way in, saying something like 'how nice of you to have come' - I tried to mumble something like the honour being entirely mine, but felt too overwhelmed and just stuttered. I heard him speak as well, but it was in Tibetan and I didn't really want to sit with a transistor radio translator to my ear to hear someone else translate into English - I'll read one of his books instead. He does have charisma, even meeting him for 2 seconds!
It's incredibly beautiful here in the mountains, at about 2000m high. The weather is crisp, cool, clear and sunny, so there's a clear blue sky above the deodar (cedar) trees and the snow-tipped mountains, foothills of the Himalayas, behind. There are monkeys in the trees and eagles and this morning I saw a flock of green parrots. The views are stunning and there are lots of roof terraces where you can sit with some tea (yes, I've really enjoyed salty Tibetan butter tea, a bit like liquid cheese sauce) and marvel at them.
I actually went to a rather sad and dark little Anglican church with a graveyard full of old colonials yesterday morning (it's an old British Colonial hill station up here, called McLeod Ganj) to counterbalance some of all those religions with a smidgen of my own and was happily surprised by the choice of reading by a fellow traveller of Psalm 121, the one about lifting up your eyes to the mountains, something I've been doing constantly. I've done a lot of walking here, it's gorgeous and my legs are co-operating nicely.
I'm also finding out rather a lot about Chinese war crimes and human rights violations in Tibet, truly shocking. I've been reading up in the library here on history, ancient and recent and have also seen some documentaries shown here by the museum, which also has lots of photographic material. I'm not sure how I am going to keep my mouth shut once I'm back in China. However, I spoke to the D.L.'s secretary for Human Rights who told me to try and explain the Dalai Lama's Third Way instead, which proposes peaceful co-existence within China, within an autonomous framework, rather than plead for independence for Tibet. I will be trying to get to Tibet itself this year, but not sure about how and when yet.
By the way, Richard Gere has put his name on a public toilet here, as a sponsor. Is this true Buddhist humility?

I suppose Delhi is not really India either, but it's yet another aspect. I was lucky to be able to share with my journalist friend Michael, who was working on expenses, so we could have a nice room in a nice hotel (still pretty budget, mind, by Western standards, but Delhi accommodation is either Western prices 5 star or grotty dirty), but this one was clean and pleasant, with a fabulously powerful boiling hot shower and BBC World, CNN and Star Movies (James Bond season) as well as a decent Internet cafe and nice restaurant.Did all the usual tourist things (on my own: Michael was covering a conference in a 'proper' swanky hotel). Saw the Red Fort, Old Delhi, Connaught Place (British Colonial), the amazing Lutyens' designed Presidential Palace and India Gate on the Rajpath, a Parisian style boulevard. Also the house where Indira Gandhi lived and was murdered and where you can see a totally uncritical exhibition about her life, surrounded by a throng of adoring Indian fans. Amritsar is not mentioned anywhere and the Emergency only in the briefest of terms.Saw lots of Mughal Muslim tombs, all done in the same pinkish red stone as the Red Fort, some with glazed blue tiles, very similar to the ones I'd already seen in Pakistan. I hadn't really realised how overwhelmingly Muslim Delhi's history had been or that there was a sizeable Muslim minority there until Partition. I found a little huddle of them, including black dresses and face veils in the corner of Old Delhi.Now in Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Said goodbye to Michael after 10 days - no, no romantic interest, he's not my type, but he was a good travel companion and I've made another travel friend, another addition to my e-mail list.Took a train to Agra, in the very pleasant company of 4 Indian physiotherapists who'd been to the European Higher Education Fair in Delhi, and the unavoidable German woman in red, on her way to a 3-month meditation with Osho in Poona.Will explore Agra tomorrow and Saturday (Taj Mahal is closed on Fridays) and then I'll go on to Jaipur on Sunday or on Monday, depending on whether I want to see another ruined city or not near Agra.

I've escaped Agra, Ali and the touts. First of all the good news: The Taj Mahal is indeed as amazing and beauteous as you'd ever imagined - even better from close up, quite overwhelming, in fact. However perfectly beautiful, I preferred the Agra Fort though, as it is much more of a historical and architectural jigsaw: started by great-great-grandfather Babur on the foundations of older fortifications, continued by great-grandfather Humayun, then grandfather Akbar, then Father Jehangir, then son Sjah Jehan (Mr Taj Mahal) who died in it, emprisoned in it by grandson Aurangzeb who finished it - please applaud my recent knowledge of the great Moghul rulers! The architecture reflects the stories behind it - there are many more, even some British Colonial ones to go with a tomb of some British hero who was killed there in the 1857 Mutiny. There are other beautiful places in Agra and my hotel, Hotel Maya, was nice, clean and with plentiful hot water (no BBC World though, but it did have HBO so I could continue my James Bond viewing).
The bad news is that Agra must have the most annoying and persistent touts in the world. I thought Egypt was bad, but then Connaught Place in Delhi beat it hands down. However, the Agra touts would easily make mince meat out of all of them. I couldn't even cross the road to the Internet Cafe without being literally laid siege to by a dozen touts, beggars, rickshah wallahs, postcard sellers, miniature of the Taj Mahal sellers, kids wanting chewing gum, chocolate, pens or just '10 rupees' and so on, and so on. And talk about persistent ...
I was partly saved from all this by Ali, a 'proper' auto rickshaw driver who took me to Hotel Maya when I arrived and took me around the sights the next day for a very reasonable price. The only problem was that he seemed to be developing a more and more serious crush on me - he started to appear to have a cup of tea with me or just popped by to see how I was or invited me to share an Indian whisky with him and his friend on the rooftop of Hotel Maya (he was supposed to be a good Muslim, who went to pray in the mosque on Fridays and had 6 children). He started touching my arm and my leg when talking to me and even got to the 'my wife doesn't understand me' stage: the wife had left him 4 years ago and was now living with her father, only going out dressed in complete black get-up including face veil ... modern marriage Muslim-style? Anyway, Ali's last good deed was to recommend a hotel here in Jaipur, run by a rather wild Australian red-head called Maggie (are Maggies always wild or only in my experience?) and arrange for his cousin Abdullah to pick me up from the bus station and drop me at Maggie's - I hope I won't have to start evading Abdullah now (Still, he's in his twenties and Ali was 52, small, skinny and with terrible brown teeth, Ali, not the cousin, - just my type, you'll say!).
I may stay in Jaipur for a while as I think I may have been invited to a wedding, but waiting for confirmation. While in Agra I met this very aristocratic Brahmin Freemason British educated Indian who used to be an Indian MP, even the Chair of the Indian Congress Party for a while. His daughter has started a school in Shanghai and his nephew is getting married here in Jaipur on 8th, and he invited me to the wedding - I believe it when he contacts me, but if he does, it would be a wonderful opportunity - Rajastan weddings are supposed to be something else.
So, life continues to throw up constant surprises - I wonder if I will yearn for a boring and mundane life soon?