Back In The Saddle

Hello, and welcome back!  Our blogging responsibilities got away from us, but we're getting back into the swing of things.  Since we've last posted we've visited Cambodia, Vietnam, and India, but while it's still relatively fresh in our mind we're going to start at the end and work backwards over the next few posts.

We took advantage of the kids break for Chinese New Year (and the fact that Michael's work is pretty quiet until after the CNY holiday) to spend 2 weeks touring in and around Rajasthan, an arid state in the northwest of India that borders on Pakistan and contains the Thar desert as well as countless temples, palaces, shrines, and nature reserves.

Borcherts gotta map.

It has been said that India is not a vacation, but rather an experience.  Having traveled around a fair amount by this point in our lives, we can safely say that India is one of the most intense places we have ever visited.  It is a place of extremes and energy, of incredible tradition and history but also very immediate.  We like to make a distinction when we talk to our kids about whether or not we are going on a "vacation" or a "trip", where vacations are primarily relaxing and trips are primarily character building.  India was a trip.

We flew into New Delhi where we toured around for a day acclimating to the cold weather and culture.

 

 

 

 

Yes, there are actually sacred cows wandering around intersections in Delhi.

Our first day in Delhi was Republic Day in India, when they celebrated their declaration of independence as well as the day that their first constitution took effect a year later.  As a result pretty much all of old Delhi was closed for tours since it was thronged with hundreds of thousands of patriotic revelers, but we were still able to see the tomb of the second Mughal emperor (Humayun), which was the first garden tomb on the Indian subcontinent and served as one of the inspirations for the Taj Mahal.

The Mughals were descended from various Asian steppes peoples, and swept into the subcontinent in the early 16th century from the northwest, defeating the Delhi Sultanate and establishing an empire that covered modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.  The Mughals established imperial control over the patchwork of Hindu kings that ruled and managed the day-to-day interactions with the locals, and would rule India until their power structures were co-opted by the British East India Company in the mid-19th century.

Our first day in Delhi we also toured the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, a prominent Sikh temple with a large holy pond of magical healing water, and a kitchen where they prepare over 20,000 free meals per day.

Orange bandanas for everyone!

The chapati machine on the right could spit out about 2 per second.

India is very good at making religions.  It is the origin of Hinduism and Buddhism (or as Michael likes to call it, "new testament Hinduism"), but also Jainism and Sikhism.  Buddhism is now a tiny minority in India, and successive waves of invasion and immigration have made Islam the largest minority religion. 


The next morning we took the train to Agra, and spent the day visiting the Red Fort and "Baby Taj" (a.k.a. the Tomb of I'timād-ud-Daulah, which also served as an inspiration for the Taj Mahal).

Seriously, this completely covered a three-storey building.

Basically all of the construction in Rajasthan, either historical or contemporary, was built from sedimentary rock.  A distinctive red sandstone was ubiquitous, forming not only the walls and towers of ancient hilltop forts but also the ceilings and lintels of houses we saw under construction and even fenceposts along the side of the road.  Massive white marble outcroppings amidst the sandstone were quarried to build the palaces, mausoleums, and monuments throughout the Mughal period, and were completely covered in incredibly intricate stone inlay.

We ended the day at a park across the river from the Taj Mahal where we watched the sunset and the kids blew off some pent-up energy.

AMAZING MONUMENT plus pretty good goats.

The next day we toured the Taj Mahal at dawn.  No pictures do it justice. 

Afterwards we had a quick breakfast and boarded our private excursion bus that would be our mode of transportation for the next 10 days and drove to the town of Karauli, stopping off for some birding at the Kheoladeo Bird Sanctuary, where hundreds of bird species from as far away as Siberia spend the winter.  These include the Bar-Headed Goose, which actually flies over the Himalayas to get to nesting grounds in peninsular India.

We also saw storks, pelicans, kingfishers, cranes, deer, owls, and Sambar deer (a sort of Indian elk).  We hired bicycle rickshaws and a naturalist guide to show us around for the two hours we had to spare, but the park could have been an all-day event.  This was a common theme with our India travels... nearly everywhere we went was larger and richer than we had time to fully appreciate.

In Karauli we stayed at a hotel that was operating out of the converted palace of the local Maharajah.

Out of frame: the stuffed tiger and display cases full of swords

Not a bad place to relax for an afternoon

 The British Raj was, in many ways, an imperial power structure that simply replaced the Mughals but left everything beneath it basically intact.  The hundreds of small kingdoms began teaching their nobility English instead of Arabic, but other than that it was a change that wouldn't have necessarily been noticed by your average farmer or goat herder.  Between 1947 and 1950 India converted from a British colony to a republic, and all 500+ kingdoms entered into a complex process of essentially negotiating their relinquishment of the complete power and autonomy that they enjoyed over their territory. 
Many of the local kings emerged quite wealthy and still the de-facto ruler of their former territory, however they no longer had their hereditary guaranteed income streams.  Some of them have done better than others, but many of them have begun converting their palaces into luxurious bed-and-breakfasts.  The Bhanwar Vilas Palace (pictured above) is still the home of Maharajah Krishna Chandra Pal, the 181st king of the Yaduvanshi dynasty.  He happened to be in town while we were there, and we chatted about digital marketing while our eldest children rode his horses.  Michael and Middle-Child also explored his garage, which was full of howdahs, royal palanquins, 16th century firearms, and His Highness's Royal Chrysler.

And you thought a lot of junk accumulated in _your_ house

Complete with royal sigil

  

While in Karauli we also rode a camel cart into town to visit the old city palace, which the current Maharajah's grandfather moved out of in 1933.  The first wing of the palace had been built in the 15th century, with successive waves of construction up until the 19th.

Literally all of this is made of stone.  Even the screens.

This picture shows the largest courtyard, but doesn't really capture the scale of the place.  Also, as with all palaces in India, you need to imagine it teeming with brightly-dressed courtiers, concubines, eunuch guards, and wandering magicians.  There would have been thick curtains hung in all of the windows during winter months, and thick rugs and embroidered cushions all over the floors.  There would have been gravity-powered fountains running, flowering plants everywhere, and also the occasional elephant.  The fact that this was royal life up until the 1930's is mind-blowing.

After two nights in Karauli our next stop was the Ranthambore Tiger Preserve, where we slept in tents.  Like I said: a place of extremes.  The tiger preserve also contains a hilltop fort, and the hilltop fort also contains an important shrine to Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god of beginnings and remover of obstacles.  The shrine to Ganesha contains many many monkeys.

Langur monkeys are "friendly".  At least in comparison to Macaques.

Somewhere in this picture there is definitely a wild tiger.

The following day we took two safari trips out into the tiger preserve, and while we saw a crocodile, many deer, a mongoose and a leopard, saw no tigers.  This is, apparently, not uncommon.  There are only a handful of tigers in the 400-square-kilometer park, and those tigers are only active for brief periods each day.  Even still, it was a beautiful savannah landscape and probably the most peaceful place we found in India.

Coming up next time, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Elephants, and Camels!

Attempting to purchase more pepto-bismol