Friday, September 24 Udaipur, City Palace, Bad Tour, Party Rickshaw, Homeless

My sleeper train entered Udaipur at 7 am. I walked over to the Government booking office to plan my stay for the weekend. I began by taking a rickshaw to the government hotel, Hotel Kajri. I caught the 8:30 tour of Udaipur, in order to get my bearings. I was one of five people, and the only non-Indian and non-forty-year-old. Udaipur is the city of lakes, and the most romantic city in all of India. Of course, I’m here alone, and when people ask I lie and say I have a girlfriend. The city is in southern Rajasthan, near the Gujarati border. The city has a series of lakes, with beautiful royal palaces on small islands, now converted into hotels. The green hills rise up above the artificial lakes, created by damming the nearby rivers. While Jaipur is the pink city, Jodhpur the blue city, and Jaisalmer the yellow city, Udaipur is the white city of Rajasthan. Founded by Maharana Udai (hence the name ‘Udaipur’) Singh II in 1559 as the capital of Mewar. “Maharana” means ‘king of the Maharaja’, ‘Maharaja’ meaning ‘Great King’. This guy was obviously a big deal. We went to see his bronze statue on top of Pratap Hill, with great views over Fateh Lake, and the whitewashed buildings squeezed between the hills and lakes. It seemed like a Japan, or a Srinagar. We rode up via bus and rickshaw to the center of Udaipur on Lake Pichola, the City Palace. The largest fort in Rajasthan, half is a museum, and the other half is still the maharaja’s residence. Majestic arched walls enclose the fort, and curving spires give it a fairy-tale feeling. They look out over the green, wild hills, and its tall walls kiss the blue lake below. The corridors are small, in order to make it difficult to invade, not because the Maharaja was small. Inside, however, you get a Las Vegas feeling. The bedrooms are covered in blue, white, yellow, and red glass mirrors. One room is completely covered in colorful golden Rajput miniature paintings. The hookah room has a nice felt seat and mirrors so you can improve your O’s; I bet a lot of guys wish we had that in our fraternity. A courtyard contains a fountain, trees, and swimming pool. Intricate paintings, glass inlay, and weapons lined the walls. Images of the black or blue-skinned Krishna (avatar of Vishnu and Nikhil’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa) were everywhere, because the Rajputs are a warrior caste, who paid homage to their representative avatar. You can rent out the terrace area for receptions…it only costs the GDP of a small country. After that, I wanted to see the Jagdish Temple, a large Hindu temple devoted to Krishna. The tour guide pointed out the way to the bus, and I went to see the temple. The temple had intricate carvings of saints and gods, like those found in Khajuraho. I was offered a meal outside the temple was a mess hall. It is run by the Brahmin priests, and gives free meals to beggars, and cheap meals to anyone who can afford it. The sympathy and openness of Hinduism is seen here, where all are welcome and those who cannot provide for themselves are helped. Well, you guessed it; I couldn’t find the bus according to the tour guide’s directions. For 2.5 hours I walked all over the Old City in a burning sweat, and empty stomach, hopelessly looking for the bus. I probably looked like an Asian version of someone on a Gatorade ad. I’m actually getting pretty brown; it’s either the dirt or the extreme suntan, I can’t tell. People have come up to me, speaking Hindi or saying they thought I was Indian. Maybe it’s the acid-wash jeans, collared shirts, and bowl cut that are doing the trick? I ended up just giving up finding the bus, and I suppressed my burning rage. There’s nothing I can do about it, and no one to get mad at, and besides, the tour was completely in Hindi, so I didn’t understand anyways. I inadvertantly ended up traversing miles about the dusty city, with its winding streets too narrow for cars. Many of the doors were guarded by paintings of colorful Rajasthani elephants and horses. People and animals worked, and screaming boys jumped into the lake while their mothers washed their clothes nearby. For some ungodly reason, I returned to Kajri Hotel, and went on the second tour, this time of the sites around Udaipur. It was completely in Hindi. I slept most of the drive through the dusty, dry deserts surrounding the city. The colors here are startling; red turbans, pink and purple saris sear the eyes against the stark dry landscape. Our first stop was a touristy museum at the battlefield between Maharana Singh and Akbar. No one won the battle, so Mewar remained an independent state until British rule. The museum featured a corny video and exhibits of mechanical Indian mannequins, like the ET ride at Disneyland. Afterwards, the bus forged ruddy dirty roads to a Krishna temple at Nathdwara. When the asshole Mughal ruler Aurangazeb (who also imprisoned and blinded his father and killed all his brothers) outlawed idol worship in India, priests moved the Krishna statue, and the chariot got stuck here. We got there in time for 5:00 puja, which was absolute mayhem. Every day at this time, thousands of barefoot Hindu men pour into a room, saying prayers to Krishna, ringing bells, and screaming. The place was hell; stinky sweaty male bodies crammed into every nook and cranny, pushing and shoving to get a view of the idol. This definitely represents the worst aspects of crowded, one-for-ones’ self, male India. Then we headed over to see a private temple, which was really ornate and covered in beautiful sandstone carvings of everything from erotic figures to Hindu deities. The bus dropped us off, and I took a rickshaw to a restaurant. But not just any rickshaw; this one had a hip young driver, pulsing blacklights, velvet seats, and a sound system that was blasting popular Bollywood tunes....The party rickshaw! The rickshaw was blatantly conspicuous going through the narrow streets of the Old City. I got dinner at a deserted restaurant. Outside, a painted-on sign read: “Movie Playing: Octopussy, 7:30”. They obviously only have one movie they play day in, day out, to tourists like me who want to see the movie in the very place it was filmed. I took a rickshaw to the Bus Stand because earlier I called and the government tourism agency said that the last train to Mt. Abu was at 10. However, when I got there, it turns out they flat-out lied. Apparently the last bus already left at 8, and the next one leaves tomorrow morning. That infuriated me. I have no hotel, and I don’t know if there will be available rickshaws in the morning. I had no place to go, so I laid down on a bench and tried to sleep, but was kicked out by a homeless man who claimed the bench. So I went over to the most-lit area of the bus stand, and apparently there is a whole business devoted to providing temporary beds for travelers. I could have used this service in the past in San Francisco and JFK airports. I grabbed two quilts and set up shop on the bus stand floor next to a bunch of dirt-covered beggars and lepers, with guys watching guard (meaning reading Hindi books). The proprietor of the street hotel was actually pretty accomodating because I’m a foreigner; surprisingly, not many foreigners sleep on floors of bus stands in India. He offered to turn on the fan, and gave me a spot right next to the guard shack. However, I was glued to my bag the entire night. I had to spend the night swatting mosquitoes, squashing ants that were crawling all over me, and sweating under the covers. So much for the most romantic city in India.