Jodhpur > Chandelao Garh > Beawar > Pushkar 44km, 112km, 68km

[Originally posted Dec 16, 2014]

We spent three days and four nights in Jodhpur. 

Jodhpur, the blue city.

Mehrangarh Fort, not too shabby.

It was the first time we’ve voluntarily stayed put for this length of time, our delay in Turkey (and subsequent trips to the middle east) was due to mechanical problems, an extra couple of days in Kathmandu to get a Myanmar Visa, waiting in Varanasi for our cross country train.  All of these stops were compulsory but for three consecutive days we hunkered down in Jodhpur of our own accord.  It wasn’t until the fourth morning, when my reinvigorated body had the strength to force loud, deep productive coughs that I figured my body strong enough to get back on the noisy and windy road.

To aid in our recovery, Katy and I looked high and low to find a little bit of “western comforts” hiding in the subcontinent.  We knew that wealthy people lived in India, we see them passing in their bright white cars with their drivers, the polite waves, the predictable questions.  For three days we did our best to see their side of India.  A nice guest house was first on the list, complete with a western style toilet and toilet paper, it was the nicest place we’ve stayed in a month.  We then set off in search for a grocery store.  We’ve been in India for almost three weeks and we have yet to see anything that resembles a grocery store.  With a little bit of hardwork, and an auto rickshaw ride across town, we found one.  Complete with 2 aisles and a checkout counter, we were in awe. 

“They do exist,” Katy quietly uttered as we walked in relative silence throughout the store.  It was spotless, and we carefully admired the out-of-place store similar to the first time we entered a Buddhist Monastery, Hindu temple or some other place of worship.

“Should we get one or three,” I asked, holding up a jar of peanut butter, jam and nutella.

“One of each or three of each?” Katy answered with a question of her own.  We weren’t sure when we would next cross paths with these life saving comfort foods, so we stocked up and were on our way.

Sometimes bland is delicious.

Simple taste, simple pleasure.

Trying to turn Indian food into veggie wraps.

The next stop was at Glitz Cinema.  If you’ve never been to “the movies” in India, then you are missing out.  It was actually my second visit, I saw the movie Ungli in Varanasi last week and it was such a strange experience I insisted that Katy come and see Action Jackson, Bollywood’s newest big hit, with me.  At the ticket counter, a dirty sheet of paper written in Hindi with English numbers was poorly taped to the window with 4 different prices listed.  I assumed the different prices were for matinees or evening shows and then I wasn’t quite sure about the other prices, maybe adult or children or maybe weekend or weekday.  I was wrong.  The best seats in the house (not too far away, not too close, and right in the middle) are the most expensive tickets with worse seats being cheaper.  Odd.  Then the movie began.  Advertisements before the show were great.  First a little girl who cries when her father lights up a cigarette, only to give him a big hug moments later when he tosses his pack of cigarettes.  Then 4 commercials in a row recruiting people to join the Indian Navy.  The Indian Navy, an ocean of opportunity.  Last but not least, a reminder to pay your taxes.  Katy and I turned to each other and laughed out loud.  Five minutes into the movie a guy approached us and asked for our food order.  Unsure what our options were, we declined and resumed the somewhat difficult task of following the plot of a movie that is in Hindi.

Just as the movie was getting good, the film stopped, the lights turned on and everyone (well, everyone is a bit misleading, I think there were 11 people in the theater) jumped up and headed towards the exit.  We then noticed the words INTERVAL projected onto the screen and so joined the others in the lobby before the film resumed.  I guess all films should include an intermission.  The only other highlight worth mentioning came about 20 minutes before the conclusion of the film.  The main actor lit a cigarette and immediately the words SMOKING KILLS were seen in large block letters on the lower right hand corner of the screen.  The movie changed to another scene and the words disappeared, but as soon as the actor returned on picture the words were back.  Wow, I thought.  Talk about a country that is really pushing back against smoking.  And maybe it is working, we see very few smokers here.  But I’ve always assumed the lack of smoking is due to poverty.  IF there is one thing that unites all Indian men it is their red stained teeth.  Stained red from the paan, or masala flavored chewing tobacco that they enjoy as much as University of Michigan students enjoy their morning coffee.

The following evening we were in the small village of Chandelao Garh, 40 kilometers east of Jodhpur.  As the children swarmed and insisted on photos, Katy I knew it was time to break the obnoxious trend of kids clinging to tourists and so we thought we would do our best to teach them some games.  It’s hard to explain the rules to Kick-the-Can, Duck Duck Goose, Red Rover or Red Light Green Light to kids who don’t speak English, but we did our best.  (Its also hard to explain Red Light Green Light, we realized, because they have most likely never seen these all-too-familiar western world inventions). 

“All the little children,” I lowered my hand to my waist to signify the little people, “need to sit in a big round.”  I used the word round instead of circle, because that was the word they used when they attempted to teach one of their games to us.  The directions didn’t quite get through, so I drew a large circle in the sand and then sat down and motioned for the kids to do likewise.  After they were all seated, and surprisingly quiet, I began.  I’ve never seen a duck or a goose in India, so we played Cow (guy), Cow, Goat (bakari).  I touched the first child’s head, guy, guy, guy and then when I reached Katy, bakari.  I demonstrated the simple game and the children went into an uproar.  Katy then did the same, choosing a young girl.  They instantly understood, except for a couple cases of running the wrong direction, not sitting down after a single run around the circle and they were in heaven.  It seemed odd that a game so commonplace and universal in one country was entirely unknown in another other, especially because it is often the children of different cultures that are always so similar.  The game could have lasted forever, but invitations to have tea with some of the older people in the village unfortunately put an end to our game.

One, two, three go.

For some reason everyone wanted to be on my side and we won this contest easily.

Duck Duck Goose.

A day later we entered the city of Beawar worn out.  As we stopped our bike in front of the Hotel Jyoti Palace, I turned around to ask Katy a question that gets asked everyday, “Do you want to check us in or should I?” 

“100 kilometers is too much,” she answered, obviously on her train of thought and not responding to my question.

“I agree.”  It was true, 100 kilometers in a day back home or in Europe was manageable, but here it is just a little too much.  “I don’t think that it is the distance that is so tough, it’s just that you have to be in India for 6 hours, its too much exposure to these people.” I continued.  The best way to explain this is to imagine that Katy and I are Gods in a distant land.  Everyone waves.  Everyone stops to say hello.  Motorbike after motorbike passes and asks the exact same questions, “from which country you are? very nice cycle, where do you want to go?  It is friendliness on overboard.  Cars stop on the side of the road and middle aged men block the road, hail us down, and request pictures.  Today we passed 3 or 4 dozen military trucks full of soldiers, they all wave.  And so when Katy told me that 100 kilometers was too much, she wasn’t talking about the physical aspect of the feat, she was talking about the mortal inability to respond to the waves and hellos.

Hello.

Just another group of men who stopped on the side of the road and requested photos.

“Well, they are the friendliest people we’ve ever met, there are a billion of them, and they aren’t going anywhere,” I joked, reassuring myself as much as I was responding to her.  We had a nice laugh, exchanged the look of “when in India” and Katy went in to see about a room.

The hotel was full and so we continued down the road to Hotel Manoj.  Katy entered the hotel, and from the street I heard the echo of her voice, “Hello, hello, helllloooo.”  A lady appeared and after a kid was pulled off the street to help translate English, a couple phone calls and the assurance to wait for just 5 more minutes a man appeared on a motorbike.  He was wearing dark blue jeans, black leather shoes, a blue dress shirt and a dark brown tweed jacket.  His fingers were covered in gold and diamond rings, he carried a little bit of extra weight (a tell-tale sign of Indian wealth) on his medium build and had a large glowing smile.  After the check in process we were offered, but it felt like we were requested without much of an option, to come to his home and have tea.  He also said we could use the WiFi at his house.  I told him that after a quick shower we would come down and we could go.

“No, first tea, then you can have a shower,” he demanded in a polite tone.  It seemed that he was a man of “no small reputation” and so I agreed and told Katy to hurry and change.  I was also very curious to see how the wealthy in India live, we’ve seen our fair share of what everyday life is like for the average Indian, but getting a glimpse of affluent living has been somewhat more elusive.  The three of us filed onto his motorcycle (it seems that 3 is the proper number of people to ride on a one seater motorcycle) and rode off to his house.  It was the first time in 5 months that I thought I should be wearing a helmet.

Once in his home, we got to talking.  His three kids live in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.  His friend had spent 25 years in Hong Kong and 10 years in Dubai.  Katy spoke with his daughter in law, Priyanka, about her recent marriage.  India is a country that believes in tradition, and one of the strongest of these traditions is the arranged marriage.  Two weeks ago in Gorakhpur Katy and I were asked if our marriage was a “love marriage” or an “arranged marriage” and we weren’t exactly sure what the question meant.  In America, it seems, there is only one type of marriage.  Prikyanka told us there are three types of marriages in India: the traditional arranged marriage, the love marriage and the love-arranged marriage.  She said that almost all weddings, especially in rural India where 80% of India’s population lives, are arranged marriages.  The parents of the bride and groom decide on who their children should marry.  But it isn’t a decision they make lightly.  A large number of factors weigh on this decision, the most important of which is the children’s horoscope.  The love marriage, as we were told in Gorakhpur, is the marriage that is least likely to succeed in India.  And I suppose it makes sense.  If two people marry for no reason other than love, then the marriage will surely end when the love ends.  And given the divorce rate in the western world it is hard to argue against this.  Love marriages exist almost exclusively in the metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.  The increasingly common, but still a minority, is the love-arranged marriage.  When two people fall in love, as Priyanka did with her husband, they must then get the approval from their parents.  They introduce their parents, who have the final say.  The parents then consider the many factors involved in a marriage - caste, career, education, interests - and then they look at the children’s horoscope, or astrological sign.  Priyanka told us about her computer program she used to enter her and her husbands date and location of birth and the two were then either matched or not matched on 36 different categories.  She told us that she matched in 28 different categories, very high, she assured us.  Katy and I thought we might ask if we could give her our information, but then realized it might be better to just continue our lives assuming that our love-marriage was good enough.

Negotiating tea, our personal driver and a visit to a preschool.

Katy and Priyanka

Then we were asked if we wanted cheese bread.  I wasn’t so sure, but when grilled cheese sandwiches with ketchup came out, I was at home.  The best thing about grilled cheese sandwiches is that once the griddle is nice and hot you can cook them as fast as you can eat them.  I had 4.  A personal driver was then called (this was where I started thinking, you know what, I could get used to this) and drove us to the temple and then dropped us off at a restaurant for dinner, only to return an hour later to return us to our hotel room.  It’s amazing what you can find in India with a little bit of money and a little bit of luck.

Dung and weeds, fuel for cooking for 800,000,000 people.

In the next life, I'd like to preach the gospel to people like this.

They continue to amaze us.

Just keep on pushing.

Preschool.