The Long Journey to McLeod Ganj

We left Pushkar at 12:30 to get to Ajmer on time for our 1:55pm train. The driver we had was apparently new (to driving) and we didn’t get out of first gear the entire ride. At some points he would stall on the hills and start rolling backward. The 20 min drive took over an hour and we were running to catch our train before it left. The train was delayed though, in the end for 5 hours altogether and we didn’t pull away until 7pm.

The train was quite comfortable and we both slept well on the 16 hour journey. In the morning we drank some chai and met a friend who was in the birth with us, Guarev, a captain in the India Army. He shared pictures and sweets with us and told us about his favorite parts of India. When it was time to get off the train he was leaning out the door and waving goodbyes and we promised to keep in touch.

Our driver, Vinot, was waiting for us at the exit and within minutes we were off to McLeod Ganj. It was planned to take about 3 hours to get to our hotel but it ended up taking about 5 hours due to a minor accident. The roads on the way up were in rough shape, some barely one lane dirt/rock roads on winding cliffs. At one point we were trying pass an area where they were doing road work but there were 2 large trucks meeting us head on. Our driver backed our car up to allow them to pass, the first going by fine and the second hitting the side of our vehicle along the way (damaging the side and bumper of our car). Before we knew it, Vinot (a short man with a small frame) had jumped out of his car yelling and screaming at the men in the truck. Then about 5 guys jumped out of the truck, yelling back at Vinot and then about 20 others surrounded our car, joining into the yelling and screaming. We were starting to get afraid Vinot was in over his head and Matt looked at me and asked if I could drive a stick… After about an hour of yelling and screaming, some phone calls to bosses and money exchanged, we were again on our way to McLeod Ganj.

During the time of the stop, we had some time to watch the roadwork being done. One cement roller with two women in sari’s gathering rocks into bowls they placed on their heads (their children playing on top of the piles), while another women gathered dirt in a bowl and the men doing the really hard labor, pouring water into the roller.
The rest of the drive was beautiful, the scenery changing from desert landscape, camels and sheep to rolling hills, mountains, prayer flags and houses built into the hills. We arrived in McLeod Ganj at about 6pm, making the total journey there 28 hours. We checked into our hotel, took long, hot showers and went upstairs to have some drinks.

Leaving Pushkar

So today at 1:55 we board a train to Jammu, stopping in Chikki Bank which is about a 2 hour drive from McLeod Ganj and the home of the Damai Lama. The train ride will be about 16 hours through some drastic changes in scenery. We are leaving the Rajasthani desert for the mountains and it will be a nice change of pace. The last few days we've been lazy, just walking about the lake and bazaar and for a sunset walked up to the Pap Monchot Temple. I'm attaching some pictures and we'll post more when we get to the mountains.

Trip to the Post Office

The most interesting part of our day today was our trip to the Post Office. There is only one in Pushkar and it's a bit hard to find, we took different narrow streets asking shopkeepers along the way. We walked all through Pushkar trying to locate it only to find out it's just down the street from our hotel, just beyond a yellow house with a blue door and a cow out front.

We enquired about the costs for mailing packages to the US and the manager said, "Oh, sure, we can send it to China" and just laughed. He invited us around to the back of the glass windows, where the post masters desks were, offered us a cigarrette and chatted with us awhile. Come to find out he is the head postmaster and he just pokes fun at the people working there. Once we found out the costs of the shipping, we left for our hotel to gather things to be shipped. Before stepping out, he started showing us how much money he stores in his desk drawers and started pulling out huge stacks of bills and laughing more.

When we returned he invited us to the back so they could package everything. They don't use boxes, they sew everything up in burlap. While one of the guys was sewing our packages, the postmaster brought us chai and biscuits and we chatted a bit more. He showed us a picture on the wall of the London Bridge, told us it was China and just laughed and laughed. We left our packages and said goodbye, he offered us a gift on the way out (a small indian jewelry box) and told us if we ever come back to Pushkar we are most welcome.

I don't think we've ever had such a fun trip to the post office as this.

Pushkar

Pushkar, a Hindu pilgrimage site, is a sleepy little town crowded around a small holy lake; which is said to have appeared where Brahma dropped a lotus flower. Pushkar gets it’s name from this incident – push meaning ‘flower’ and kar meaning ‘hand’. The story of Brahma is quite interesting; he’s considered to be the dreamer of the universe. Reality itself is Brahma’s dream. Each of his lifetimes spans 311,040,000,000 human years and corresponds to the great cycle of the universe, at the end of which it’s destroyed by Shiva. Then Brahma is reborn to dream it all again.

According to legend, Brahma wanted to perform a yagna (holy sacrifice) at the lake on a full moon night, a ceremony which required the presence of his consort, Saraswati. But Saraswati was late. Brahma quickly married a convenient milk maid named Gayatri and when Saraswati arrived she discovered Gayatri seated in her own honoured place beside Brahma. Saraswati was furious and vowed that Brahma would be forgotten by the people of the earth. The Gods pleaded with her to reconsider the curse and she finally relented; decreeing that he could be worshipped, but only in Pushkar. The only Brahma temple in the world is located in Pushkar. Saraswati and Gayatri both have temples here as well, each set high on the hill at opposite ends of the lake.

Our first days in Pushkar have been lazy, I don’t think we’ve woken before 11:00 any day that we’ve been here. We’ve shopped in the local bazaar, chatted with the locals and explored the ghats. Pushkar has 52 bathing ghats surrounding the lake, one of which is where Gandhi’s ashes were spread. It was at this ghat that we did a puja and received a blessing on Matt’s birthday (which was on the 26th). We visited the Brahma temple where there are tons of monkeys roaming around, jumping from trees to buildings. Tonight we will probably walk up to the Pap Mochani Temple for sunset and hopefully, wake up before dawn tomorrow to watch sunrise over Pushkar from the Saraswati Temple. We’ll be leaving in a couple of days, leaving the Rajasthani desert and heading up north into the mountains. It will be a nice change of pace and scenery which we are both looking forward to.

Night Bus to Pushkar

We were both a bit nervous about the evening bus to Pushkar; traveling by bus during the day is dangerous enough and we can only believe that it’s more so at night. We decided not to change the ticket though, as this was the only bus stopping in Pushkar (all daytime buses stopped in Ajmer and we would have to find another bus to Pushkar) so we left Udaipur around 9:15pm.

The bus experience is interesting in India, first we hand an address written in Hindi to the rickshaw driver and hope he takes us to the correct spot. There isn’t a central bus station, just various spots on streets where the buses stop. The rickshaw driver stopped at a storefront and we handed our tickets to a travel agent who ripped off a piece and told us to sit and wait. A man came about 30 minutes later and said to follow him. We followed him down two streets to the bus waiting and then he asked us why we were there, we had to go down a different street to catch our bus. We proceeded to find our bus the next street down after asking several people along the way.

The bus ride was fairly uneventful aside from coming close to colliding with another bus on the way out of Udaipur. It was a bit hard to fall asleep as the whole bus seemed to shake and rattle on every bump in the road. We both closed our eyes and slept for the first few hours.We made one stop that I remember for some Chai at a small town. We sat and talked to a camel driver from Pushkar who was on his way home. He was very nice, sharing his chai tea and sweets with us. The stop was longer than usual and various men from the bus were working under the chassis, altogether the stop took about an hour. We just prayed it would make it all the way.

We arrived at about 5:30am and awoke to the driver telling us to get off the bus. We thought we were in Pushkar but after looking around noticed all of the signs said Ajmer. We found the bus driver and told him we were promised the bus would take us all the way to Pushkar and this was Ajmer. He took us to a car and told us to get in; this man would take us the rest of the way to Pushkar. The man seemed nice enough and had his son with him but there is something eery about trusting strangers when you are in a strange place and unsure of where you are going. In any event, he took us the rest of the way to Pushkar (about 20 kilometers away). We were almost stopped at a road block on the way but the he veered off the road as guards were waving for us to stop. He explained that they wanted him to pay taxes for bringing tourists in and he wasn’t about to do it. He didn’t ask us to pay for the ride but said “if you feel like paying me 10, or 100 rupees…” so we gave him 20 rupees for the experience.

Goodbye Udaipur

We are leaving for Pushkar tonight on a 10pm bus. The last couple of days have been great. We shopped in the local bazaar, went on a sunset boat ride and in the evening watched a traditional Rajasthani dance (crazy, old lady balancing up to 9 clay pots on her head while dancing on broken glass), and found some pretty nice restaurants. We'll post more when we arrive in Pushkar!

Udaipur, City on the Lake

Udaipur was a very pleasant surprise. It is a quaint and romantic little city surrounding a lake, a nice change from the desert. The room at our guesthouse has a beautiful view of the lake and the palace, instead of spending 2 nights here (as originally planned) we’ve decided to stay for 5.

On our first night here we ate dinner at the Marwar hotel which has a beautiful deck overlooking the lake with cushions and pillows to relax on while eating dinner. We’ve since been back 3 times for various meals and met some friends there as well. Bunty who works at the Marwar and is a native of Udaipur, invited us to his village 5km away for a festival tonight honoring his sister’s new baby. In India there is a festival every day it seems!

Udaipur is absolutely beautiful to walk around, so many things to see, elephants walking about, people washing their clothes and bathing in the ghats (where all of the sewage goes as well)... We explored the City Palace which offers amazing views of Lake Pichola and the Aravalli hills. We headed to the Monsoon Palace for sunset which sits on a hill overlooking all of Udaipur. On the way back to Udaipur, our rickshaw driver really wanted to show us his art school on the way back and we reluctantly agreed. We should have known it was going to be a hussle to buy artwork. After about 30 minutes and our refusal to buy, we headed back into the city. At night was a festival which included a special dancing with sticks, hundreds of people all hitting their sticks in unison to music.

Today we will explore a bit more of Udaipur, possibly rent a boat at sunset and then meet our friend Bunty to go to the festival this evening. More to come!

Lazy Days in Jodhpur

We’ve been completely lazy our last days in Jodhpur, lounging on the roof of our guest house, reading and chatting with other travelers. We met Daniel who ironically only lives about 10 blocks from our place in San Francisco. We went with Daniel to the fort to watch the sunset over Jodhpur and walked around the outside wall of the fort.

While exploring the fort, we decided to walk up some narrow steps to one side of the fort. We knew that there was a monkey up there so Matt decided to poke his head over the stairs to see where it was before we stepped out on the ledge. The monkey met him eye to eye and seemed angry that we were invading his area of the fort. He made some mean screeches and started pushing Matt down the stairwell. We both ran down the steps as fast as we could, getting scraped up along the way. The women at the top seemed humored by this and couldn’t help from laughing at us. We decided to avoid that section and walked on to a safer wall!

We’ve become fairly accustomed to walking around bulls and cows in the street, although I have a very uneasy feeling having a bull walk directly behind me. They all seem fairly docile, just walking and eating and not causing much bother. I was surprised to be buying a water on our way back and seeing two bulls less than 5 feet away start butting heads and fighting in the street. I ran as far as I could away from them! We’ve heard from other travelers of being hit by horns, etc but luckily haven’t had that type of encounter!

We boarded a bus for Jodhpur and after a little over 6 hours (with no bathroom incidents), arrived in Udaipur.

Jodhpur Sights, Sounds and Smells

We took a long walk from our hotel to the Clock Tower and Sardar Market, which is in the Old City of Jodhpur. It was only 2 kilometers away from our hotel in almost a straight line but we took every wrong turn we could find, each shopkeeper pointing us in a different direction. We made it there in 45 minutes. To our excuse all the streets looked the same: merchants selling fruit, sweets, tea, water, spices, knickknacks, children (just kidding), etc. Then you have people constantly asking “where you are from”, “where are you going”, “what is your name”, etc. On top of that, you are trying not to be run over by rickshaws, buses, cars, motorcycles, cows/bulls, goats, sheep, people, etc. So there are a few distractions…oh wait I forgot to mention all the smells bombarding you at every turn: imagine candy/sweets, Indian food, carbon monoxide, spices, tea, body odor, and poo. It’s a sensory overload. We wish we could pack it up and send it home ;).


Too keep a long story short we decided to take a rickshaw (rather than relying on our navigation skills) to another hotel we were thinking of booking. The hotel is in a 500 year old blue house on a quiet little street near the fort. We had a small bite to eat and booked our room for the next two days ($11 a night). After making small talk with the owner we walked to the Meherangarh Fort, which is about 5 minutes away. The fort was quite incredible, it is the largest fort in Rajasthan and all building materials were chiseled from the rock on which it stands. Its about 125 meters above the city giving unreal views of the blue city below.


As we walked up to the fort groups of people would stop and say hello (“Allo”), especially the children. We would meet one person and they would gather the rest of their family so we could all shake hands and say “allo”. Then there would be groups of kids who would want to have their picture taken, climbing the fort walls and posing together.
















Matt wasn’t feeling 100% so we only spent a few hours at the fort. Tomorrow we plan on waking up early (about 10 am), have a long brunch and then walk back to the fort. Have a good day at work. Wait what day of the week is it? :)

Arrival in Jodhpur...

After a 6 hour bus ride, we've arrived in Jodhpur. The ride was actually quite comfortable on the bus, until the first stop anyway. I decided to stop and use a bathroom in a local restaurant, it was a squat toilet and not all that clean with about an inch of waste on the floor. I was rushing as I knew the bus was only stopping for a short moment. In my haste I slipped and fell on the floor, my entire side covered (top to bottom) . I might as well have been in a portable toilet that fell sideways. I ran to the bus (as it was starting to leave) in tears and Matt was in sorts trying to figure out what had happened to me. After I told him what happened, he immediately tried to help clean me up. I felt ill completely and what was worse was knowing I had another 4 hours before our arrival. So many people saw the state I was in and started offering hankies, water, making sure I wasn't hurt.. I had a couple of small cuts that we made sure were clean and I just sat it out trying to keep from being sick.

Upon arrival in Jodhpur I went straight to the shower and Matt handled checking in, etc. Before heading up for dinner, we both started feeling sick, Matt more so than me and he continued to get worse. We had a restless night last night, he has a terrible fever and stomache ache but he's resting now and starting to eat a little. The antibiotics should help and hopefully he'll feel better in the morning. Getting sick was bound to happen at some point during our travels but it still doesn't make it any easier.

I am posting some videos in the previous posts as we now have a high speed connection. Hope all is well with everyone.

Camel Safari in the Desert

We booked a 2 day camel safari to take us out into the desert. The hotel arranged everything for us and at 9am a jeep picked us up to drop us into the desert, there Dina and Keville were waiting for us with all of our supplies and 3 camels. We were able to choose our own camels and their names were Kua and Johnney. Matt’s camel was a bit stubborn, refusing to stay with the group, taking time to eat and then galloping to catch up with the rest of us. We rode into the desert for about 3 hours before stopping in some dunes to make lunch. Dina made us some chai tea, chapatti and fried vegetables over a fire (which were so incredibly good!!!) and Keville taught me how to make chapatti. We then set off for about 3 hours further to the next set of dunes where we played cards, made dinner and setup for the evening. There were a few locals who stopped by our camp to chat and one old man who came to bring us some beer! Who knew you could get beer in the middle of the desert?

I can’t even describe the sky that night, it was the start of the new moon so all you could see were endless stars and constellations. I’ve never seen stars like that in my life. We slept on blankets under the stars with Keville singing some traditional songs, beautiful. We awoke at sunrise with Dina bringing us Chai tea and breakfast of eggs, toast and jam in bed! We watched the sun rise over the dunes and then prepared the camels to set off again. I don’t think either one of us wanted to get back on our camel, riding for a full day our inner thighs and bottoms were in sore shape. We set off again for another ride, stopping along the way for the camels to drink some water and again just to rest for a bit in the shade.

We only had a few hours left of the safari and we headed to the location in the desert where the jeep had dropped us off for lunch before leaving. Johnny must have been ready for Matt to get off his back as he bucked him off when we arrived at our spot. Matt landed in the dunes on his feet though… Dina made us some tea, chapatti, rajasthani vegetables and rice and then we took a nap under a big tree waiting for the jeep to arrive. It was a great two days in the desert and we bid farewell to our new friends.

Moti Pokey

We had a great night last night listening to music with our new friends Sander and Anook (from Holland). Once the music was finished, we played cards with the artist’s from the hotel. They knew how to play “asshole” in which the first person to play all their cards is president and the last person with cards is the “asshole”. They taught us the Hindi word for asshole, which is “pokey” and Anook was “Pokey” for the first few rounds. Then they taught us the word for big “moti”, so then we were calling it Moti Pokey and we were all laughing hysterically. The next morning, the artists were still laughing about it, saying “moti pokey…”

The next day we had a relaxing morning and then set out to go to the fort. On our way one of the artist’s invited us to his home within the colony. He started playing the bongo and it didn’t take long before someone ventured in to play the accordion, then someone else heard the music and brought their catonets and finally, someone came in to sing. We had a full house and the impromptu session was great!

We walked around the fort with Anook and Sander, stopping at the market and going into various shops along the way. I feel in the short time we’ve been here that we’ve met so many locals. We see people we know around every corner and stop to chat. In such a short period of time I feel as though we have become part of the community. We’ll miss this place and especially the people very much.