I bid Jodhpur a fond farewell, after one lass makhaniya lassi and some fresh cucumbers. I bought myself a vegetable peeler so the range of raw things I can safely consume has widened greatly. Goodbye, Jodhpur! I'm on a color tour of India, from the Pink City to the Blue City to the Golden City.
I spent my few hours last night refreshing the Indian Railways ticket-status page, hoping to see my Jodhpur-Jaisalmer ticket change from "W/L 7" (waitlist; can't get on the train) to "CNF" (confirmed, hop that sucker!), back in the rooftop restaurant paying too much for dal fry and roti, listening to Canadians kvetch about being "over India". And the numbers changed, so I popped my backpack up on my shoulders, holstered my ukulele, and armed with iodine-purified water, toilet paper, and my new diary, I haggled my way to the train station for 40 rupees and hoisted myself up to the third-tier bunk that my patience won for me. Night train to Jaisalmer, 6 hours, 11:45 PM and arriving at 5:30 AM. Cold. The desert is cold. Because it's winter.
Shiva the farmer met me at the train station with his motorcycle, and in the pre-dawn chill we careened through the streets--me juggling backpack, ukulele, and shoulder bag--to his guesthouse so I could get a little bit more sleep before riding out into the desert. When I woke up there was water boiling for me to shower, and hot lemon-ginger tea for my sore throat, and we climbed up to the roof to soak in the sun and dispel the lingering chills of the night. Then Shiva went to deal with guests and turned me loose at the 500-year-old Jain temple complex to roam and entertain myself for the day.
Jaisalmer is peaceful and relaxed, my favorite place so far. The streets are narrow and the number of auto-rickshaws is low. It's quiet and there is less pollution than in any of the other places I've been. The stonework on all the old houses is incredibly intricate, and the Jain Temples were overwhelming in the beautiful craft and painstaking skill that went into them. It makes me want to study art again. Shiva asked me over tea on the roof if I like India--the big question that I'm not in any hurry to answer yet. I like pieces of India, the answer I came up with. I like the kind people and how beauty is so prized, how people surround themselves with beauty (painting the cows, the elephants, the cars, their doorways, their motorcycles, their skin with henna). I like the food. The rhythm can be fatiguing. The garbage is heartbreaking. But I love Indian art. It strikes me deeply as sincere and vibrant. I feel movement in the Jain sculptures and I feel song in the paintings on walls and papers. It feels sacred even when it's secular. So much feels holy here.
Yeah, Jaisalmer is nice. People walk most places. The buildings are all made of a honey-amber-colored stone that I've heard glows gold in the sunset, but I haven't gotten a sunset yet and we're hoping to ride out to the farm. I did buy myself a tiffin and a beautiful camel-leather fedora to shield my eyes from the sun. I feel like a pilgrim. I look like Indiana Jones in loose Indian ladies' clothing.
So I'm out into the desert for two weeks, no electricity, no plumbing, and (I think it goes without saying) no Internet. Just the sun and the sand and the chickpeas we're nurturing along.
Here I go!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
One Week
The air is cool and comfortable, filled with music drifting up from--somewhere--it sounds devotional, but maybe it's Bollywood. I'm seated on the floor on the roof of the Cosy Guest House in Jodhpur, the Blue City of Rajasthan, eating bananas and oranges and sweet peas from the pod (only things that come in natural packages). I burned my mouth on a samosa and the juice from these sweet little oranges stings and smarts on my lips. I'm barefoot happy and wrapped in the soft gauze scarf I haggled for and won in the market today. My body is clean but my clothes are dirty, and the smells wafting from the kitchen make me wish I hadn't spent my budget for the day. But the scarf is warm now and shaded me from the sun, and today I also bought sunscreen, so it's worth it for my skin.
I've been on the ground in India for one week today. I'm at a loss to understand how I've managed to live so much in one week. It seems like I've always been here, but if that were the case then I wouldn't be so disoriented. And my Hindi would be much, much better. I've had a few scary moments with Indian men overstepping boundaries, and a few really stupid moments where I was naive enough to get cheated out of a tidy sum of money. But I'm learning from those, and the good parts are much better.
Short version goes like this: I was in hotels in Jaipur for three nights, then spent two nights at my newfound friend Rahul's family home in Amber, a town right outside Jaipur and full of life. His family didn't speak much English (the kids learn English in school, but it's rudimentary still) so we communicated mostly through food, headbobbing, gestures, sheepish smiles. The food that Rahul's sister cooked was incredibly delicious, but had me dashing in and out of the toilet room and doubled over with stomach cramps. Turns out that when it's spicy going in, it's still spicy coming out...enough said. Rahul and his friends Lala, Mann, Vinod, and Vijay went out of their way to show me a wonderful time in Amber, from introducing me to a baby elephant to throwing a party in honor of my older brother's birthday. And then on December 18th I hopped a train to Jodhpur, the Blue City. How long have I dreamed of coming to Jodhpur? Long enough. It's not as blue as I imagined it, though to be fair it's pretty blue. And tomorrow I'm jumping on another train to Jaisalmer, to meet up with Shiva Singh, who runs Dumpal Khadin organic farm, my first WWOOFing connection.
My innards seem to have quieted themselves, and the food here in Jodhpur has been amazing. Amazing masala omelettes for 50 cents on the street; amazing saffron lassi from a shop under the clocktower (they have a whole menu, but Lonely Planet mentioned their saffron lassi and now they don't sell anything else; they don't even ask when foreign people come in, but just clunk a saffron lassi on the table. and it's incredible); the best samosa I've ever had (I had three for lunch/dinner). Even the cheapest street food here tastes wonderful. Everything is full of flavor. Surprisingly, the sweets aren't great. Jalebi, little fried squiggles of sugary dough, turn my stomach. Really, it's just fried sugar. Raju, a boy I met in Jaipur, insists that people eat them for breakfast. Yeah, right. And most of the other sweets I've had so far are similar concoctions of sugar and butter (held together with a little gram flour) without much flavor.
Today, really for the first time since I got here, I was alone. In Jaipur Rahul and his friends were my constant escort, and yesterday in Jodhpur I met this awesome American couple at the railway booking office and ended up spending all yesterday and a lot of today with them. They've known each other since they were 15 and have been traveling for something like 5 months, on an epic journey around the Ring of Fire starting in Alaska and down the West Coast, then to south Pacific and across Eastern Asia into India. They were so even-headed, so real. They helped me to break through my inability to haggle, and they helped me to find a new notebook and pens (which was a day-long journey from bookstore to stationary store and everywhere in between). And they recommended the omelette shop where I'm having breakfast again tomorrow. The dude who runs the omelette shop has been making omelettes there and nothing else for 13 years; he goes through over 1,000 eggs each day. Lonely Planet talks about him, too, so of course everyone goes there. In the afternoon I parted ways with Galen and Jeff (they're bound for Goa) and I hiked up to Jaswant Thada, this beautiful white marble memorial to some Maharaja or another, built in 1899 and overlooking the whole city. There's a garden there where I sat and broke in my new notebook. I felt peaceful and relieved to be alone. I heard the call to prayer resounding out above and through the whole city. It's so eerie and amazing: several lead voices on PA's, sounding amplified as if only by reverence and spirit, and this deep thrumming beneath of thousands of voices amplified only by their unity. I want to get up before sunrise tomorrow and hike up to the hilltop to see the sun come up over the edge of town. It's my last chance to do so, since I'm getting on a train tomorrow night for Jaisalmer. Maybe I'll just watch the sunrise from the roof of my guesthouse, which is a bit above the main part of the city, in the Old City, the blue part of the city.
This is a really challenging place. I'm learning strength and awareness, and dealing with a lot of thoughts about necessity, luxury, equality, entitlement, humanity. Waste, garbage. Generosity, kindness. Desperation. I'm reading a dark and cynical William Burroughs book called The Western Lands, based in ancient Egyptian writings. He writes of Sek, the second soul, life energy that abounds in disaster and desperation. This place is rich with life energy, with Sek, fertile with life energy.
I've only been here a week; seven days seems like an awfully short time to change your life.
I've been on the ground in India for one week today. I'm at a loss to understand how I've managed to live so much in one week. It seems like I've always been here, but if that were the case then I wouldn't be so disoriented. And my Hindi would be much, much better. I've had a few scary moments with Indian men overstepping boundaries, and a few really stupid moments where I was naive enough to get cheated out of a tidy sum of money. But I'm learning from those, and the good parts are much better.
Short version goes like this: I was in hotels in Jaipur for three nights, then spent two nights at my newfound friend Rahul's family home in Amber, a town right outside Jaipur and full of life. His family didn't speak much English (the kids learn English in school, but it's rudimentary still) so we communicated mostly through food, headbobbing, gestures, sheepish smiles. The food that Rahul's sister cooked was incredibly delicious, but had me dashing in and out of the toilet room and doubled over with stomach cramps. Turns out that when it's spicy going in, it's still spicy coming out...enough said. Rahul and his friends Lala, Mann, Vinod, and Vijay went out of their way to show me a wonderful time in Amber, from introducing me to a baby elephant to throwing a party in honor of my older brother's birthday. And then on December 18th I hopped a train to Jodhpur, the Blue City. How long have I dreamed of coming to Jodhpur? Long enough. It's not as blue as I imagined it, though to be fair it's pretty blue. And tomorrow I'm jumping on another train to Jaisalmer, to meet up with Shiva Singh, who runs Dumpal Khadin organic farm, my first WWOOFing connection.
My innards seem to have quieted themselves, and the food here in Jodhpur has been amazing. Amazing masala omelettes for 50 cents on the street; amazing saffron lassi from a shop under the clocktower (they have a whole menu, but Lonely Planet mentioned their saffron lassi and now they don't sell anything else; they don't even ask when foreign people come in, but just clunk a saffron lassi on the table. and it's incredible); the best samosa I've ever had (I had three for lunch/dinner). Even the cheapest street food here tastes wonderful. Everything is full of flavor. Surprisingly, the sweets aren't great. Jalebi, little fried squiggles of sugary dough, turn my stomach. Really, it's just fried sugar. Raju, a boy I met in Jaipur, insists that people eat them for breakfast. Yeah, right. And most of the other sweets I've had so far are similar concoctions of sugar and butter (held together with a little gram flour) without much flavor.
Today, really for the first time since I got here, I was alone. In Jaipur Rahul and his friends were my constant escort, and yesterday in Jodhpur I met this awesome American couple at the railway booking office and ended up spending all yesterday and a lot of today with them. They've known each other since they were 15 and have been traveling for something like 5 months, on an epic journey around the Ring of Fire starting in Alaska and down the West Coast, then to south Pacific and across Eastern Asia into India. They were so even-headed, so real. They helped me to break through my inability to haggle, and they helped me to find a new notebook and pens (which was a day-long journey from bookstore to stationary store and everywhere in between). And they recommended the omelette shop where I'm having breakfast again tomorrow. The dude who runs the omelette shop has been making omelettes there and nothing else for 13 years; he goes through over 1,000 eggs each day. Lonely Planet talks about him, too, so of course everyone goes there. In the afternoon I parted ways with Galen and Jeff (they're bound for Goa) and I hiked up to Jaswant Thada, this beautiful white marble memorial to some Maharaja or another, built in 1899 and overlooking the whole city. There's a garden there where I sat and broke in my new notebook. I felt peaceful and relieved to be alone. I heard the call to prayer resounding out above and through the whole city. It's so eerie and amazing: several lead voices on PA's, sounding amplified as if only by reverence and spirit, and this deep thrumming beneath of thousands of voices amplified only by their unity. I want to get up before sunrise tomorrow and hike up to the hilltop to see the sun come up over the edge of town. It's my last chance to do so, since I'm getting on a train tomorrow night for Jaisalmer. Maybe I'll just watch the sunrise from the roof of my guesthouse, which is a bit above the main part of the city, in the Old City, the blue part of the city.
This is a really challenging place. I'm learning strength and awareness, and dealing with a lot of thoughts about necessity, luxury, equality, entitlement, humanity. Waste, garbage. Generosity, kindness. Desperation. I'm reading a dark and cynical William Burroughs book called The Western Lands, based in ancient Egyptian writings. He writes of Sek, the second soul, life energy that abounds in disaster and desperation. This place is rich with life energy, with Sek, fertile with life energy.
I've only been here a week; seven days seems like an awfully short time to change your life.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Hobo is going, again!
Yeah, Hobo is going again--but not to the frozen wastes of the far north, oh no. Hobo's bound for warmer climes, to overwinter (like cabbages in December! Like kale under a low tunnel! Like spinach in a hoophouse!) in a land of spice and color, shrouded in mysticism and air pollution.
INDIA.
And she's leaving in about, oh, say, three hours. Give or take.
(and she's going to try to keep updates. Or at least write letters.)
INDIA.
And she's leaving in about, oh, say, three hours. Give or take.
(and she's going to try to keep updates. Or at least write letters.)
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