Rajasthan Part 2

Welcome back!  After Ranthambore we had a couple of more urban destinations in a row.  We started off in Jaipur, the "Pink City" that was actually a planned city built in the early 18th century when the capital of the Amer kingdom outgrew its narrow valley to the  north.

It contains, among other things, a collection of enormous mechanical astronomical tools, including sundials and star charts.  The largest sundial in the collection could tell time accurate to 2 seconds, and the assorted instruments were largely used to be able to more precisely generate horoscopes.

Sadly, they didn't let us climb to the top

We also visited the city palace and explored the beautiful inlaid halls and gates, and our guide for the day brought us to a local market.  At the market the entire local economy was laid out in the open, with farmers bringing their vegetables and flowers in to the central square and selling only large quantities at wholesale prices, where it was bought by middlemen who would bring it just 10 meters away outside the official market square, and sell a wider variety of vegetables and herbs at a mark-up.  The farmers themselves were even just renting the right to sell in the market from the lease holders, whose job it seemed was to sit in the shade and drink tea.

In addition to the food market there were streets and streets of flower sellers, again selling in bulk to people who were creating garlands to be sold to the people who were going to the temple to bring as offerings.

Nobody could resist giving him flowers

We're not sure if it was part of a tourism-board-approved itinerary or not, but our guide also brought us into the kitchen of one of the more popular street food stalls, and explained how the fried potatoes and curry was created on an industrial scale.  For whatever reason, super hot, bustling commercial kitchens ended up being a recurring theme on our trip.

We eventually made our way back to our minibus, where we took a quick break to feed the cows that had gathered there. The ubiquity of wandering cows is hard to overstate.  We saw them foraging in trash piles and scrub brush, but also being fed the day's first bread by city dwellers.  They were, like many things we encountered, an aspect of daily Indian life that had basically no western equivalent.

 

The next day we took a trip out past Amer to visit some elephants.  Although there are a lot of tourist attractions that still use elephants as conveyances (like the Amer fort just down the road), but the practice is decreasing as more and more tourists realize that the elephants don't actually _like_ to cart people around.  Instead, we visited an elephant sanctuary where we pet the elephants, fed them sugarcane, and went on a stroll with them.  They are terrifyingly large in person.

Happy elephant is happy.

Our mixtape is gonna be sick.

Our next stop was the holy city of Pushkar, home to the one of the most famous Brahman temples in India.  Of the top tier of the 33 million Hindu gods, Brahma (the creator) is a lot less popular these days than Shiva (the destroyer) or Vishnu (the preserver).  Pushkar is built around a holy lake that is said to have been blessed by lord Brahma himself, and consists of dozens of temples and holy bathing ponds (or "ghats"). 

Shoes go off, shoes go on; shoes go off, shoes go on...

The water is sacred, but not especially inviting.

Pushkar at night!  This restaurant served us eggs, even though they weren't supposed to.

After Pushkar we headed west, and stayed in an array of small villages.  We took a jeep "safari" out to explore some of them and meet some locals where we had opium tea with a farmer's family, and Eldest tried her hand at throwing a clay bowl at a potter's workshop.

On our way westward to Osian and the Thar desert we stopped off at Jodhpur (the Blue City) to tour the fort there.  Jodhpur is the second largest city in Rajasthan, and had a picturesque lost-in-time feel to it.

Finally, we made it to our last real destination before taking a night train back to Delhi for our flights home: a camel camp on the edge of the Thar desert.   The Thar desert extends from here well into Pakistan, and was a pretty inhospitable place even when we were there during the nicest weather of the year.  The record high temperature in this region is over 125 degrees fahrenheit and gets just a few inches of rain per year.  Our children claimed that this wasn't a real desert since it didn't have minecraft-style cactuses, but I think the camels prove otherwise.

Trekking out to get a good view of the sunset

There is no graceful way to get off a camel.

Osian had once been a large and prosperous town, and had a number of important pilgrimage sites dating back to the 8th and 9th centuries.  We saw a steady stream of people coming to receive blessings, split sacrificial coconuts, and pay their respects to the goddess Sachiya.

Like all Hindu temples, this one felt like a cross between a cathedral and a casino.

After our camel excursion we spent a day lounging around our lodging at the camel racing track, eating delicious food and letting the kids run around until it was time to pack them into an overnight train back to Delhi.

India is an incredible place, full of bustling energy, insane contradictions, and extremes of climate, geography, and wealth.  Between Michael's work and Elizabeth's social group around the condo we know a lot of people that are part of the Indian diaspora, and this trip gave us a lot more insight into their background and perspective.  It was also amazing to see how a country as populous as China can exist without any sort of strict hierarchical control and command economy... it's not always pretty but it seems to be holding together.

Next up: We go hiking through the mountains in Japan!