Monday, April 5, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Hawa Mahal
Hawa Mahal is the wind palace. In all the brochures and promotional literature it looks like a huge imposing massive structure, but really, it's only about 40 feet tall. It was built for Lord Krishna (I think). I was shocked at how small it really is, inside and out. I had trouble walking up the ramps on the inside just to get to the top. Yvonne had less trouble, but I caught her ducking a couple times...
Another funny thing about the Hawa Mahal is the fact that its edifice stares straight into the heart of the shopping in the pink city. If you're on the street, you can almost walk by it and not notice it. The entrance to the Hawa Mahal is on the back side. That meant that walking into it, we had no idea it was the same place until we got inside and asked people about this beautiful face. We were told it's on the OTHER side. It's a little bit shady methinks...
Here are some pics.
Another funny thing about the Hawa Mahal is the fact that its edifice stares straight into the heart of the shopping in the pink city. If you're on the street, you can almost walk by it and not notice it. The entrance to the Hawa Mahal is on the back side. That meant that walking into it, we had no idea it was the same place until we got inside and asked people about this beautiful face. We were told it's on the OTHER side. It's a little bit shady methinks...
Here are some pics.
Jaipur
Street FoodAgra was a long day. Two trains, two cabs, two different places to sleep, paying way too much to see the Taj, getting carted around by a rickshaw driver who was only interested in stopping in shops that paid HIM, ugh.
So off to Jaipur we went the next morning at a casual 5AM. Ouch! 5AM!? What the hell were we thinking? Who knows. What I do know is that Yvonne definitely had the foresight to book first class AC tickets. I gotta say, I haven't been the biggest fan of chair cars, because it's difficult for me to sleep in a chair, but this was definitely a nice ride. First class means you don't deal with food sellers. They brought me newspaper of my choice to start the ride. All passengers got a rose (of course I know one passenger who was more pleased about that than I), cereal, tea, THEN BREAKFAST, then more tea. I fell asleep after that, but apparently the service continued like this for nearly the whole 6 hour journey. By the time we arrived in Jaipur, I wasn't really feeling refreshed, but I wasn't feeling like I should kill anyone either.
So, here we are, Rajasthan, the so called, land of the kings. It's semidesert. A lot of dirt and dust infiltrating my lungs. It's really hot too. Of course, the only piece of it we saw is Jaipur. Jaipur is known as "the pink city." Apparently, back at somepoint during the British Raj's tenure prince (andrew?) came for a visit and wanted the city to be pretty. It was then decided to paint the city pink. Rather, now it's more of a terra cotta color. But still alright.
Jaipur is also known as the city of palaces. There is a lake palace (that you can't go in), Amber Fort, Tiger Fort, Hawa Mahal (the wind palace), and a large variety of other palaces and forts whose names I can neither remember nor pronounce correctly in the first place. Well, we got some cabbie to take us to the hotel. It was an OK hotel. For the price it was decent enough. We were only there one night en route to Mumbai.
The other thing about Jaipur that one will notice, is the immense shopping area with a dearth of restaurants! I got hungry man! Ah, street food saves the day...
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The Taj Mahal
Well, I guess there isn't a lot to say about the Taj Mahal. It's a huge beautiful building that took a lot of laborers (20,000) a lot of years (22) to build and then they all got slaughtered. A lot of work for a Muslim boss who doesn't even give his workers wine at the end of the day...
I think in the end, the opulence of the Taj kind of disgusted me. I really, just didn't get very good vibes from the place at all.
I think the amount of literature about the Taj far outdoes what I could possibly do for it, so let me tell you a little about my day in Agra instead.
Rather than trying to book a room in Agra for the night we'd decided that we'd go at ass o'clock early to Agra and come back on a late express train to Delhi. As you might expect, there are a lot of daily trains back and forth from Delhi to Agra because, frankly, a lot of people want to see the Taj Mahal. So after a somewhat crowded morning train ride we arrive in Agra about 11 AM. Right as we're getting out of the train station, we get completely pounced on by all the drivers trying to take us everywhere. Finally we decided to hire a guy for the day to drive us to the Taj and to Agra Fort and to wherever else we wanted. Agra Fort seemed unappealing to both of us and so we forewent that. However, we, like all other tourist who come to India, went to see the Taj Mahal. It is a first class rip off for foreigners. Indians have to pay Rs 20 and foreiners Rs 750. They aren't even subtle about it. I was a little pissed off about that. There are lots of rules a regulations in place, mainly if I do say so myself, for Indian tourists (not all of them, but the minority) who would trash the place. Nonetheless the policing of tourists is MUCH more strictly enforced for foreigners. I was standing in line with an Austrian guy who with his girlfriend had been traveling around India staying in Ashrams and such and he said "they just look at us as wallets with legs. They don't care about anything else. It's just a form of racism and they are open about it." I was a bit shocked to hear a person who had come to India for some sort of spiritual quest speak so openly against India. But I was also impressed. He just out and said it, and told me a few stories about being in ashrams where he got overcharged blatantly. So, I ascertained he wasn't sold on his India experience. Anyway, it turns out the Taj is pretty and grandiose, and all that other crap that the tour books say it is, but I was generally unenthused. I couldn't get out of my mind a building with so much inlay with writings from the Qu'ran all over it was built by such a terror of a man. He killed all the workers after they built a mausoleum for his wife just so no one could replicate it. F-that!
The real highlight of the day was going to an art school (before the sales pitch) and seeing how the marble inlay was done. At this art school it is still done by hand and with much patience and diligence. Turns out, at the end of the day, they just wanted to sell us stuff at overblown prices too. In the end, we bought a carved Ganesha for our hosts in Delhi (my friend's family) but the price marked was Rs 2500. We said we'd pay Rs 550 for it. Of course they took the deal when we walked out. Lame. Anyway, here are some Taj Mahal pictures.
I think in the end, the opulence of the Taj kind of disgusted me. I really, just didn't get very good vibes from the place at all.
I think the amount of literature about the Taj far outdoes what I could possibly do for it, so let me tell you a little about my day in Agra instead.
Rather than trying to book a room in Agra for the night we'd decided that we'd go at ass o'clock early to Agra and come back on a late express train to Delhi. As you might expect, there are a lot of daily trains back and forth from Delhi to Agra because, frankly, a lot of people want to see the Taj Mahal. So after a somewhat crowded morning train ride we arrive in Agra about 11 AM. Right as we're getting out of the train station, we get completely pounced on by all the drivers trying to take us everywhere. Finally we decided to hire a guy for the day to drive us to the Taj and to Agra Fort and to wherever else we wanted. Agra Fort seemed unappealing to both of us and so we forewent that. However, we, like all other tourist who come to India, went to see the Taj Mahal. It is a first class rip off for foreigners. Indians have to pay Rs 20 and foreiners Rs 750. They aren't even subtle about it. I was a little pissed off about that. There are lots of rules a regulations in place, mainly if I do say so myself, for Indian tourists (not all of them, but the minority) who would trash the place. Nonetheless the policing of tourists is MUCH more strictly enforced for foreigners. I was standing in line with an Austrian guy who with his girlfriend had been traveling around India staying in Ashrams and such and he said "they just look at us as wallets with legs. They don't care about anything else. It's just a form of racism and they are open about it." I was a bit shocked to hear a person who had come to India for some sort of spiritual quest speak so openly against India. But I was also impressed. He just out and said it, and told me a few stories about being in ashrams where he got overcharged blatantly. So, I ascertained he wasn't sold on his India experience. Anyway, it turns out the Taj is pretty and grandiose, and all that other crap that the tour books say it is, but I was generally unenthused. I couldn't get out of my mind a building with so much inlay with writings from the Qu'ran all over it was built by such a terror of a man. He killed all the workers after they built a mausoleum for his wife just so no one could replicate it. F-that!
The real highlight of the day was going to an art school (before the sales pitch) and seeing how the marble inlay was done. At this art school it is still done by hand and with much patience and diligence. Turns out, at the end of the day, they just wanted to sell us stuff at overblown prices too. In the end, we bought a carved Ganesha for our hosts in Delhi (my friend's family) but the price marked was Rs 2500. We said we'd pay Rs 550 for it. Of course they took the deal when we walked out. Lame. Anyway, here are some Taj Mahal pictures.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Green Park in Delhi
No, this isn't some nice public space, it's just a neighborhood. It is however, named, Green Park. Yvonne and I were running around trying to find some place with a reliable internet connection. So we walked out of our guest house in Delhi, turned left and walked for a while. We stopped to ask people if we could find a travel agent, or a booking agent, or anything else we could think of. It turned out to be a big hassle.
Let me set the record straight: VERY FEW PEOPLE IN INDIA SPEAK ENGLISH. I don't know what the tour books and tour guides tell you, but they are lying if they tell you it's possible to get around only speaking english. It simply is not possible. I work at an upper echelon institute full of PhDs in the sciences. I still have a hard time understanding some of them and they are educated in English. My ears are pretty good now, but a few months ago... forget about it.
So, what does one do when one wants to book plane and train and automobile tickets? Ask for a travel agent naturally. Well, we got led around to a car rental place. I stated immediately, "I'm not driving a car in Delhi. I'm not likely to drive a car in India." Turns out, it didn't matter. The car rental place only rents to companies. Useless. So we asked the guy at the counter who "CLAIMED" to speak english where a travel agent was. He pointed us in some direction, we walked that way. Just to be sure, we asked another half dozen people on the street en route to the "travel agency." My Indian friend (from Delhi) had warned me about this early on in my stay, but he warned me against the Tamils. "They will tell you to go somewhere, because they don't want it to seem like they don't know." Well, he was completely and utterly correct in that statement. My belief now, however, is that this phenomenon is not unique to just southerners. We walked around and every person seemed to give us different directions. So we decided, it was internet cafe time. Eventually we wound up at a Reliance store and Yvonne bought some 500 minutes of internet usage. So we sat in there for almost 2 1/2 hours booking trains to Agra, Jaipur, mumbai, goa, and a couple plane tickets too. Luckily, we got most of our travel arrangements for the first half of the trip finished at that point.
In the meantime, walking around Green Park we found a charming little neighborhood in south Delhi. Furthermore, there are a few random mausoleums and tombs identical to those in Lodhi Gardens, which are no doubt from the same sultancy, just removed a few kilometers.
Let me set the record straight: VERY FEW PEOPLE IN INDIA SPEAK ENGLISH. I don't know what the tour books and tour guides tell you, but they are lying if they tell you it's possible to get around only speaking english. It simply is not possible. I work at an upper echelon institute full of PhDs in the sciences. I still have a hard time understanding some of them and they are educated in English. My ears are pretty good now, but a few months ago... forget about it.
So, what does one do when one wants to book plane and train and automobile tickets? Ask for a travel agent naturally. Well, we got led around to a car rental place. I stated immediately, "I'm not driving a car in Delhi. I'm not likely to drive a car in India." Turns out, it didn't matter. The car rental place only rents to companies. Useless. So we asked the guy at the counter who "CLAIMED" to speak english where a travel agent was. He pointed us in some direction, we walked that way. Just to be sure, we asked another half dozen people on the street en route to the "travel agency." My Indian friend (from Delhi) had warned me about this early on in my stay, but he warned me against the Tamils. "They will tell you to go somewhere, because they don't want it to seem like they don't know." Well, he was completely and utterly correct in that statement. My belief now, however, is that this phenomenon is not unique to just southerners. We walked around and every person seemed to give us different directions. So we decided, it was internet cafe time. Eventually we wound up at a Reliance store and Yvonne bought some 500 minutes of internet usage. So we sat in there for almost 2 1/2 hours booking trains to Agra, Jaipur, mumbai, goa, and a couple plane tickets too. Luckily, we got most of our travel arrangements for the first half of the trip finished at that point.
In the meantime, walking around Green Park we found a charming little neighborhood in south Delhi. Furthermore, there are a few random mausoleums and tombs identical to those in Lodhi Gardens, which are no doubt from the same sultancy, just removed a few kilometers.
Back to the Lotus Temple
Last time I went to the Lotus Temple is cauhgt me by surprise. I went with my friend and our driver dropped us off on the backside of the temple's grounds and so when the temple was in sight it appeared to be really huge. The fog had given it an eery presence. This time around, it looked like it does in all the promotional literature. I gotta say, the Lotus Temple is my favorite building in India. After I went and sat in it again and got a few moments of quiet (even in India) I went down to the information center where they were showing a video on the construction of the Temple. It is quite impressive to say the very least.
Being Baha'i means that they build 9 sided temples. In case you're wondering that calls for 9 40-degree angles to be built. It's not the easiest job to undertake. Moreover, the design process of the temple was incredible. Check the pictures below to see how intricate the structure is. The construction involved all sorts of new engineering techniques and the marble which sits on the outside was specially crafted in Italy over a period of more than 2 years. All told, Lotus Temple is my favorite building in India. In fact, it might be my favorite building in the world. It's worth the visit if you ever get the chance.
Being Baha'i means that they build 9 sided temples. In case you're wondering that calls for 9 40-degree angles to be built. It's not the easiest job to undertake. Moreover, the design process of the temple was incredible. Check the pictures below to see how intricate the structure is. The construction involved all sorts of new engineering techniques and the marble which sits on the outside was specially crafted in Italy over a period of more than 2 years. All told, Lotus Temple is my favorite building in India. In fact, it might be my favorite building in the world. It's worth the visit if you ever get the chance.
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