COLORFUL INDİA - RAJASTHAN

Rajasthan is the land of the kings, the land of the Rajas, the land of the Rajput warrior. It is also the land of  colorful turbans, the land of glittering saris, the land of castles and the land of fables. The south east is hilly and green, whereas the north west is dry and barren due to the Great Thar Desert which extends beyond the border into Pakistan. With its cities which are Red, Golden, Blue or White, with its people who are friendly, with its colors and tastes, Rajasthan is a jewel.

I went there twice, with eight years interval between the two journeys (2003 and 2011). Each of my trips followed more or less the same route, starting from the Shekhavati region to Jaisalmer in the middle of the Thar desert via Bikaner, continuing to Jodhpur, and ending via Mount Abu in Udaipur and then Jaipur. Why would someone do the same journey twice? The first time, I was with a group and in many places I had the feeling of not having seen enough, not having been able to mix with the crowd and live the city. The second time, we were only four friends and could go at our own pace. I had time to wander in the streets, talk to people, even sit in cafés to have a drink. And that is much more enjoyable.

Shekhavati is a loosely held confederation of a large number of towns that were once ruled by different members of the Shekhavati clan. This arid part of the desert has given rise to the largest number of trader families, called Marvaris, now settled all over the country and controlling the financial interests of India. The ancestral homes of those families provide the richest concentration of frescoes seen anywhere in the world  since  in the Shekhavati  region ‘’havelis’’ ( the name given to those mansions)  are profusely painted. The majority of the frescoes were made between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. They cover the facade of the buildings as well as the interior, the inside of arches, the columns and pillars, the ceilings, leaving no exposed surface unadorned. The frescoes deal with the mythical, the historical, the legendary, the floral and even the absurd. The result is a socio-history of the times painted in comic-book fashion on the region’s mansions.

SHİVA MAKİNG FUN WİTH GİRLS

SHİVA FLİRTİNG WİTH GİRLS

Some of those frescoes are really funny; the artist has heard that a machine called ‘’plane’’ exists in England and that machine has wings and flies. He decides to paint a plane. Of course Shiva will be the VIP passenger so takes place in it with his entourage. On his drawing, the artist puts wings on the plane but surely that machine cannot fly without a little help. So below he draws a celestial being since only those can fly. The celestial being carries the machine and so you have a plane.

Following the same logic, the strongest animal being the elephant, only an elephant can pull a boat in water or a bus on land. So naive but so creative.

Bikaner, the Red City, is an obligatory passage in Rajasthan. A visit to the imposing Junagarh Fort is a must but more so the Karni Mata Temple  shouldn’t be missed. You do not go there due to the extraordinary beauty of the temple. The temple is not even beautiful by Indian standards. But you go there because this is the place where mice are king. India is surely the only country in the world which has a temple dedicated to mice. Everywhere  the mouse is considered a dirty rodent; in India the mouse has a temple dedicated to it. And that is what, in my opinion , makes India so loveable. According to legend, Karni Mata, a 14^th century incarnation of Durga (a form of Shiva’s wife Parvati), asked the God of Death, Yama, to wait for her restore to life her son. When Yama refused, and her son was reincarnated without waiting for her, Karni Mata was so angry that she decided to reincarnate all her son’s descendants as mice. And the temple is dedicated to those descendants now living as rodents. There are mice  everywhere you walk on and do not forget that you walk barefoot in any Indian temple. So a visit there is not exactly for the squeamish,especially that it is considered  very auspicious if a rat passes over your foot. It is inconceivable to kill a mouse here, since you would be killing a descendant of Karni Mata herself. The animals are fed with milk and even that milk is auspicious causing people to put whole loaves of bread into the milk so that the bread soaks the milk the mice have drank or walked in, and they can take it home to their families to eat and thus live in happiness. This really is incredible India .



JUNAGARH FORT - EXTERİOR

JUNAGARH FORT - INTERİOR COURTYARD





 

MAHARAJA THRONE

HOLY COW İN THE STREETS OF BİKANER

 

We then continued deep in the desert to reach the Golden City of Jaisalmer with its imposing fort built from sandstone.  Unlike the other Rajasthani forts which are the former residences of the maharajas, the Jaisalmer Fort encloses a city that still lives. And that makes it even more interesting. I loved wandering in the small streets of Jaisalmer, look into shops, talk with sellers and enjoy the city.

Jaisalmer too has changed a lot in eight years. Before, there were no shops inside the fort, now there are. Whether this is a good thing or not can be argued of course. There are even small coffee places which were non-existant. Sitting in one of those and enjoying a delicious apple pie (the owner was German), I found out again why I love this country and its people. Opposite us was the wall of the fort and lots of pigeons were flying over it. All of a sudden one of them fell to the ground like a bullet. It seems it was a young bird which had not yet mastered the art of flying. All the shop owners and others around us left whatever they were doing and some even abandoned their clients to rush to the bird . Water was brought  and the pigeon was made to drink some, it was put on a cushion but as it had hit its head on the pavement, the bird could not be saved. It was taken away on the pillow and I do not know what happened to it afterwards but I would easily believe it has been cremated since it will reincarnate in one form or another. In what country, especially in our western world, would we see such attention and care brought to a wounded bird ? I have doubts even a  wounded person would get all that care. Many would just pass by, doing as if they hadn’t seen anything not to get into the trouble of answering to what happened. That also is incredible India.

THE WALL FROM WHİCH THE BİRD FELL

Afterwards, we visited the part of the old town which is outside the fort. Here the havelis , even though not decorated with paintings, are like lace made out of stone. There is such a workmanship that you cannot take your eyes away from the mansions.  You end up walking with your head in the air, not looking at all to what is on the ground. Luckily, there was no cow excrement around.

On my first visit, I had come to Jaisalmer in February because the Jaisalmer Desert Festival   takes place at that time every year. It should be watched once but it is a bit artificial since  the whole festival takes place in a stadium and the city itself does not live it. The colors are worth the trip though. You really live in the Rajasthan of the Rajas for one day.  

When I went to the Desert Festival, I was still working and as each profession has its own professional deformations, mine was to look for banks in every place I went to. At the festival, I was obviously not looking for a bank – what is a bank going to do in a stadium in the middle of a festival – but the bank found me in the form of a camel. Yes, a camel. The camel is a bank. There was even competition since two banks were represented by two different camels. Next to the animal, there was a clerk in dark suit and tie with a briefcase in his hand, sweating profusely in the heat and that clerk could exchange money if you wanted to. And very legally furthermore, since you are at a bank. He even gave a receipt.  I call this intelligent creativeness and take my hat off.

Then on to Jodhpur, called the Blue City due to the characteristic blue color of its old buildings. This tradition of painting in blue is due to the Brahmans who discovered centuries ago that the color kept the mosquitoes away. The  Megrangarh Fort of the Jodhpur maharajas , on a huge rocky cliff , dominates the city and is the most imposing fort of  Rajasthan in my opinion. The lattice work of the palaces inside are as beautiful as those in Jaisalmer.  A visit there is well worth the climb.  
My second visit to Megrangarh Fort was even more interesting than the first, because a Bollywood movie was being shot. Lights, songs, beautiful girls and handsome soldiers (it must have been a historical movie according to costumes) were walking around , fitting the decor of the fort to perfection. It was a trip back into history, in the appropriate setting, and with the actors. 

THE BLUE CİTY

PALACES İN THE FORT

PALACE OF THE LADİES - THE ZENANA OR HAREM



BEDROOM OF THE MAHARAJA



AUDİENCE HALL OF THE MAHARAJA

EXTRAS İN THE FİLM



 In Jodhpur I stayed  for one night at the Umaid Bawan Palace, an immense white building in the middle of the plaine, a bit outside the city. You can see it from everwhere. The Umaid Bawan was the residence of the Jodhpur maharajas after Megrangarh Fort and was constructed in 1929 with a very philanthropic purpose. In those years there was a formidable drought in Jodhpur and people could not work their fields, could not earn money and were dying of hunger. The then Maharaja decided to have a new palace built to save his subjects. He hired 3000 workers from the city and put them on his payroll for fifteen years , time of completion of the palace. He thus enabled his citizens to earn money and buy food. True ? Not true ? I don’t know but that is the story they tell you when you go there. Today, the actual Maharaja and his family still live in one wing of the palace and the rest has become a hotel. 

Walking in the market of Jodhpur, I suddenly realised that you should go to your dentist before going to India, because if by any bad luck you have a tooth ache, your fate  will be sealed by a street dentist and his instruments. Tooth are literally pulled out in the middle of the street .

 From Jodhpur  we continued  to Mount Abu to see the Jain temples of Ranakhpur and Dilwara. The decorations in those temples are another feat of human prowess, this time resulting in lace made of marble. The workmanship takes your breath away and you wonder why people today cannot create such beautiful and delicate works of art . All pillars, walls and ceilings of the temples are carved into several layers giving the marble a fragile look.

Udaipur, the White City, and the Lake Palace Hotel in the middle of the Pichola Lake, remind me of love. Why I cannot tell, but both times I went to Udaipur I had this impression.

In Udaipur, you have to stay at least one night at the Lake Palace , built by one maharaja’s son for his own pleasure, then used as the summer royal palace . I had the chance of staying there during my first trip. Hotel boats pick you up at a special jetty to take you to the island,you sleep in the old apartments of royalty, you rest in shady courtyards surrounded by lotus ponds and you are made to feel like a maharani (wife of a maharaja). It is worth the money.

Then  visit the City Palace, Rajasthan’s largest palace which was the seat of  the Udaipur government and the residence of the maharaja. Walk through the beautiful mirrored rooms, the ornamental tiles and analyze the details of the glass-made mosaics of peacocks, the favorite Rajasthani bird, which are incredible.  Then wander in the narrow streets behind the City Palace, enter small temples, mingle with people and shop as much as you want since you find everything in Udaipur. Enjoy Udaipur at your own rhythm, do not rush, do not run, do not look at your watch, and just live the experience. I couldn’t on my first visit here, but I did it on my second. And I am happy I did it.

CİTY PALACE

LAKE PALACE

MİRRORS OF THE CİTY PALACE

CİTY PALACE COURYARD

THE PEACOCK



You cannot leave Rajasthan before going to its capital city, Jaipur, the Pink City. And it really is pink due to the color of the stone available in this region. I remembered the old city as a pink town where camel carts, bulls  and a few bicycles were on the roads and Jaipur had seemed to live at its own pace. Eight years later, Jaipur was living at the Indian pace and had become a chaotic, congested city. No more camels or bulls but millions of motorcycles and a few cars, all emitting very dirty exhaust fumes due to the low quality diesel used; no way to cross the streets due to the unending flow of  motorcyclists  who drive like crazy and on the ''wrong'' side to top it all (in India the traffic is on the left due to British legacy); even the pink buildings seemed less pink since those fumes must have taken their toll in eight years. I had liked Jaipur the first time but after my second visit, I can easily say ‘’Jaipur should be seen once but not twice and even less three times'’.

A few things in Jaipur have stayed the same though. First, the Hava Mahal, the city’s most distinctive landmark, which is a five-storey structure, with no depth. I fact it is a narrow building with niches made to allow the ladies of the royal family to watch the street without being seen. It is not in the Muslim world only that women used to be in harems, in India they were too. The second  thing that fortunately did not change was the  climb to Rambagh Fort on elephant back. It was fun during my first trip and it was fun the second time. It is only when you are sitting on the back of an elephant that you realize how high you really are.  I definitely love elephants though. How does such a big animal manage to be so cute ?

Rajasthan means colors and it is the people who make it so colorful. Describing how would not mean anything. You just have to see for yourself.

  

Going twice to the same place has its advantages and disadvantages. The second time you can easily do the things you couldn’t do on your first visit, but you also realize how everything changes and usually not for the best, how globalization makes the whole world the same, erasing local colors and cultures. And that is happening very fast in India since the country is developing at great speed. Rajasthan has lost its colors in eight years. The colorful turbans, pink, violet, green, orange, yellow, that men wore everyday, everywhere have totally disappeared in the cities and can only be seen now in small villages. The colorful saris are still there but in much fewer number, being supplanted by the shalwar-kamiz (baggy trousers and shirt). When you talk to the people, men say ‘’who has the time to roll a turban in the morning?’’; and women say ‘’you have to take the children to school, go to work, do your shopping on the way home, cook dinner, and the pan of your sari keeps falling in the frying pan. A shalwar-kamiz is much more confortable.’’ Are they wrong? No they are not, but today even the younger generation girls are not in sari anymore. They wear spaghetti jeans and the kamiz. In five-years the kamiz will disappear as well and welcome to the universal uniform: a jean and a T-shirt. This is sad but is happening everywhere be it India, Africa or Papua. I am not against modernization, more amenities, better facilities, but do people have to gain this at the expense of their culture? India without saris will not be India anymore. And does everybody everywhere have to become similar in appearance ?