I Did It All For The Nakki

I have crossed the fine state of Rajasthan from corner to corner, and it is time for this, like all good things, to come to an end. I am on my last stop of this Rajasthani tour, a stone's throw from the Gujarati border in the hill station of Mount Abu.

A "hill station" is a mostly British creation, the idea being to escape the scorching heat of summer by retreating to resorts at higher elevations. I also suspect that the British quite liked an excuse to build nostalgic little English colonies in the hills. Also the fact that there tended to be a small native population and just one mountain road leading up probably aided greatly in the regulation of municipal melanin levels.

Mt. Abu however has a much longer history as a site of pilgrimages. It is a predictable place to be considered special, as the gargantuan mass of rock on which Mt. Abu (which is more of a plateau) sits juts sharply out of the surrounding plains, reaching several high and dramatic peaks. It was these shrines that I came to see. Most visitors however come for the cool, fresh air and romantic ambiance. It is a traditional getaway for Rajasthani and Gujarati honeymooners, and now increasing numbers of unmarried couples, as Gujarati men profess enthusiastically (and without any solicitation to do so) that taking a girl here for a pleasant romantic weekend is the best way to get laid. There are also large numbers of Jain pilgrims, and some Hindu pilgrims as well. These pious pilgrimages reach a climax during the peak hill station season, which I am sure is purely a coincidence.

Desipte the locals' priorities, I visited the center of Mt. Abu's tourist appeal quite late in my visit. I made it down to the edge of Lake Nakki, a small lake filled with paddle-boats shaped like swans and similar hokey contrivances that lend the area the feeling of a second-rate state park. This impression is reinforced by the profusion of ice-cream stands, cheesy lakeside diners, picnicking families, embarrassed dating couples, swarms of schoolchildren with uniforms straight out of the Where's Waldo? School of Art and Design, and awful music. At one such ice cream stand a man bearing an uncanny resemblance to Saddam Hussein pumped Indian techno, which at first was a forgivable stab at emulating Eurotrash beach music, but just couldn't go the full length of a song without suddenly introducing wailing Hindi voices and the atonal eructations of unidentified brass instruments.

The shrines I found considerably more appealing, though the majority of the well-known ones prohibit photography. Gahhh.The first I went to was the Adhar Devi temple, located up a very long mountainside staircase, as I found out so is every other temple on Mt. Abu. Entering the temple door, you soon find yourself surrounded by the mountain in a narrow crevasse coated in white paint. At the entrance to the shrine itself you are forced to scramble under a ludicrously low-hanging rock and into a cave where there is a striking idol of Durga, the demon-slaying queen bitch of the Hindu pantheon.

From there I proceeded across the plateau to a village called Achalgarh, where there are numerous little temples. Climbing high up the mountainside out of the misguided belief that I was supposed to go that way, I reached the summit and found that it was essentially abandoned, boasting only a handful of brick ruins overgrown with vines. My eye was suddenly caught by a tiny stone staircase leading down along a cliff face. I followed it cautiously past another ruin until at the end of it I saw a brick wall built into the mountainside and a single pair of shoes by the door. I poked inside and found myself in a complex of several small cave chambers, one with a lingam, the other with a large idol, with of candles and incense still burning. To the side of the idol were a pair of minuscule passageways leading into the pitch-black depths of the mountain, concealing unknown horrors or treasures. The owner of the shoes was nowhere to be seen but could not be far away, and the silent blackness gave no clue whether he was sound asleep deep within unseen passages or if he was watching my every move from the fringe of his inky lair. As I lingered and still no sign presented itself, this grew more and more unsettling and I left as quietly as I entered. You may laugh, but I know better than to take my chances explaining my intrusion in a foreign tongue to a zealous, lurking troglodyte.

Finally I made my way back to the main attraction, the Dilwara Jain temples, which are famed for their intricate carving. Above the entrance was a most foreboding sign:

"ENTRY OF LADIES IN MONTHLY COURSE STRICTLY PROHIBITED. OTHERWIS MAY SUFFER"

Jain temples have a bunch of odd restrictions which they enforce with varying amounts of zeal. They feel quite strongly about not allowing entry to menstruating women, but inspecting for this particular form of contraband is the one line they are not willing to cross in the name of temple sanctity. Thus the Dilwara temple authorities, as they themselves are powerless to enforce the restriction, merely warn women that they incur the risk of possible divine retribution for their transgression. I feel this is a reasonable compromise. Near the entrance, on a placard purporting to contain 'historical informations', it also says

"THESE TEMPLES SHINE AND SHINE ALMOST ALONE LIKE A BRIGHT STAR IN THE LONG GALAXY OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD..."

It had better be good.

Words cannot describe how intricately these pure marble temples are carved. The artists were paid proportionally to the mass of the chips and dust they produced whilst carving, and the result is impressive indeed. The most important of these temples, a thousand-year old structure commissioned by the Rajput king who then controlled Gujarat, is about the size of a basketball court. Every possible surface is carved in an almost absurd amount of detail. Columns, ceilings, walls, arches, everything is carved with increasingly fine and minute sculptures, almost like fractals composed of animals and deities. There are, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of carved figures in this one temple alone. I hesitate to say that there may be in excess of a million in the entire compound, though this seems plausible. In addition to the sculptures, the ceilings are spectacularly adorned with panels and domes, each displaying a unique form of the lotus flower, hanging in three-dimensional splendor from the roof, their geometry playing tricks with the light on the pale marble as you move beneath. In the many shrines within the temples are idols. The adornments outside are just sculpture. The idols, though less ornate, are equally amazing. Most of the tirthankara statues are made of impeccably polished marble with silver detailing and a jeweled "third eye" on their foreheads composed of a thumbnail-sized ruby surrounded by rings of diamonds. One of the lesser temples houses a colossal 8-foot tirthankara covered in gold.

OK, 'historical informations', fair enough.

I returned and paid my visit to the town of Mt. Abu, which is almost entirely comprised of hotels and shops catering thereto, then walked out to one of the scenic overlooks. I was trying to scope out where the honeymooners were hanging so that I might deliberately enter their midst and gather information with which to ridicule them in my writing, but they were so shy I felt bad about it. The place was peaceful, and I left them in peace. Peace. What an idea, I thought. Though festive by day, at night the air is still enough to be pierced by the cries of birds and insects. The incessant clamor of bells and horns and honking cars that shakes the unsleeping cities late at night was missing here. I then realized the single best thing about Mt. Abu, the source of its tranquility: everyone here is already married.

Oh, but if only that were true. Though there are no raucous marriage processions here, the rites of evolving Indian courtship smack you in the face. As you watch the sunglasses-wearing Indian men pedal their silly little boats with grim faces as their ladies gaze wistfully off at flocks of snow-white birds alighting upon rocks in the rippling waters of Lake Nakki, you can just see the furrows increasing in the mens' brows, a tally of the hours of such activities they've endured upon this mountain in pursuit of that most elusive of all Indian prey. And then the couples get out the boats, and the women wander off to shop for bangles. Then the men walk up to amiable-looking foreigners, and with much knee-slapping and graphic mimicry, irreverently gush about their chauvinistic ordeals, and you understand why they have to take their women on a vacation all the way up a fucking mountain to get any.

Off in the distance is Guru Sikhar, the highest point in Rajasthan. Though a dwarf by Indian standards, at 1,772 meters it is no anthill. It seemed only fitting to conclude my tour of Rajasthan with a hike to the top. One one side the hills fall sharply down to the barren Rajasthani plains. On the other side, barely visible a short way off through the evening haze, lies Gujarat, where my journey takes me next.

Rajasthan is mine, from its four corners and now from top to bottom. From the dusty smog-choked shithole of Jaipur in the East to the dusty, sandblown piles of dust and sand in the dusty, sandy West; from the dusty, frigid camel-barn called Bikaner in the North, to the dusty, lukewarm elephant stables of Bundi in the South; from the bottom of the emptiest lakes, to the top of the most comparatively un-dusty peaks, I am now the master of this land.

Maharajas,

y'all best step the fuck off.

Dodecapussy

Udaipur may be the only place besides Amsterdam where advertising the fact that your cafe has nightly "Octopussy shows" is not a cause for communal outcry. The city is perhaps best recognized as the setting of the cinematic masterpice Octopussy. I was determined to use the opportunity to compose and film a short, loosely-connected sequel called Dodecapussy, starring a cast of myself and 12 Mewari princesses, but as we shall see, Fate did not decree that the Maharaja of Mewar and I should be on good terms.

My introduction to Udaipur was not landing on an island filled with seductive maidens, but being dropped off in a dark alley to look for a man who looks like he would know how to play the didgeridoo. He found me in a courtyard rather helpless and showed me to my room. His name was Guddu. Guddu is the cousin of my homie Raj, and along with an incredibly confusing assortment of his extended family runs a nice guesthouse in the heart of Udaipur, a stone's throw from the massive City Palace. I approached with my usual skepticism. Guddu took me to the rooftop, where there was a chill-out open-air lounge with a pool table, a didgeridoo collection, cushions, and a shrine to Ganesh. Suitable, I thought to myself. Then I saw a poster of baby Krishna playing the flute. A poster of baby Krishna playing the flute partially covered by an Iron Maiden promo. There was no further debate.

I quickly came to know many of Guddu's relations. There was his wife Moniga and his seven-year old son Rajit, undisputed king of the pool table. There was his matronly mother-in-law who clearly was the power behind the throne but took a warm liking to me, and a grumpy father-in-law. The rest of the family tree was a mystery to me but it was impossible not to be aware of Jheeni, the adorable toddling girl whose silence broke predictably every morning with impassioned screams for her favorite relatives to attend to her. As a friend of the family, I was boarded in Rajit's bedroom, a source of considerable confusion to the numerous infants who kept wandering in.

Among the guests, who were always outnumbered by relatives, were two whom I befriended quickly, a cantankerous conspiracy-espousing Dane with frequently vocalized opinions regarding atheism, socialism, and the volume of Indian wedding celebrations; and a rotund, affable Dane who was formerly a practicing Hindu monk and is now attempting to open a heavy metal bar in Kathmandu. Joined by myself, Guddu, and prodigious amounts of charas, these characters held weighty discussions on faith, human nature, politics, and the future of India over a soundtrack of Iron Maiden classics. My stay in Udaipur repeatedly extended itself.

My first touristic stop was by neccesity the City Palace. This palace is the largest in Rajasthan and the second-largest in all of India, a country that takes its palace-building very seriously. It is composed of eleven large wings, and contains multiple historical museums and luxury hotels. Needless to say portions of it were very fine and I enjoyed it greatly. Leaving the palace I ran into a group of wealthy tourists. Udaipur, home of some of the most famous hotels in the world, is full of these types. I was clearly not fitting in to the clique I found myself in. They complained that the palace was too labyrinthine (which it was) and haphazardly designed, almost spitting when they proclaimed their distaste for its asymmetry, and segued into a huffy and mind-blowingly ignorant exposition of the aesthetic inferiority of the Orient. Never one to allow rich people to go unmolested, I interrupted "So I suppose you like that Palladian bullshit? Bitch, please" which drew rather startled reactions. Their stares, eyes shining bright through the shade cast by their Martha's Vineyard visors, grew only more bewildered as I delivered a blistering architectural treatise in which I compared the Rennaissance to a 9-year old child insisting on being breastfed by ancient Rome and made other criticisms which I immediately realized were a bit nonsensical but conveyed the spirit of what I was trying to say, which was that snobby rich pricks can go fuck themselves, preferably on another continent.

It's wedding season in India. The astrologers that encourage half of India to get married at the same time must be punished, because the proliferation of Indian marriages also proliferates Indian marching bands. These bands may be the worst musical ensembles on the face of the globe. Your high school marching band? Much better. Your middle school marching band? Still better. Some random assholes given an assortment of horns? As long as they stay out of the street, still better. Indian marching bands, which head the innumerable processions bringing city traffic to a standstill, are composed of three main elements: the Wagon, the Drums, and the Horns. The Wagon is a wheeled cart covered in ornamented sheets of tin, which carries electronic speakers blasting horrible unmelodic crap, apparently scoured from napkins found in the rubbish bins of drunken English military officers, at great volumes. Behind the cart follows a mobile generator, chugging along to power this infernal contraption. Both the generator and the Wagon are pushed slowly onwards by Indian men of all ages in dusty and outrageously ill-fitting marching band uniforms. The Drums are a group of drummers, who are quite capable of keeping a decent marching rhythm on their snares. Alas, tragically and incomprehensibly, this is rarely the same rhythm being blasted by the Wagon's subwoofers. Finally there is the Horns, a group of horn players who have apparently not learned how to play most of the songs. Though they occasionally join the drummers in performing with loud honks, they mostly remain silent, carrying their instruments purely for show while the Wagon produces all the actual "music." They are typically found in the front of the procession, frequently causing them to be awkwardly stranded ahead of the rest of the band as the Wagon tends to get stuck as traffic tries to pass around it, and the marching band it not actually trained in marching and nobody signals to the front that the rest of the band has stopped. From time to time the Horns surrender all pretense of being musicians, and are called upon to help push the Wagon uphill.

I hate Indian weddings. In fact, I rather dislike most things to do with Indian weddings. I told my Indian friends as much, and to my surprise they emphatically agreed. "Everybody hates these weddings. All these bands, all these fireworks. We are having to go to too many weddings. We are invited to weddings we do not know the people getting married. They like big wedding so cousins, brothers, friends invite their friends, we have to come. So much trouble for everybody. Just have wedding and finish, please." I then asked them if they would do the same at their weddings. "Well, yes" they responded.

This is why India never solves any of its problems.

I went on a thoroughly unedifying trip to Chittaurgarh and became rather glad that the Maharaja of Mewar got his ass kicked so bad he had to found Udaipur. Then as I made my way back to the guesthouse I discovered that the current Maharaja was hosting a wedding. After passing no less than five godawful marching bands on their way to commoners' nuptials I saw the preparations being made for the royal event. Men were hoisting timpanis onto a painted elephant. I spent the night indoors. Not that it helped.

After a tumultuous night of listening to the nearby royal festivities I took it upon myself to explore the lake. Udaipur is built on the edge of Lake Pichola, which not only contains water, but also contains two islands on which are built some very exotic palaces. The white-washed Lake Palace occupies its entire island and seems to float like a ship. This is the Palace from Octopussy, and guess what, the Maharaja now runs it as a ludicrously expensive hotel and you can't go in. I toured the lake by boat, grumbling at the Club Med types all around me. We did however land at Jag Mandir island, which is only mostly a luxury hotel run by the Maharaja, who out of love for his country and culture also allows any visitor to go to the cafe which serves 430-rupee sandwiches. Breaking away from the group, I slinked off to an off-limits part of the island, where (surprise) I found the detritus of yet another very expensive wedding. I spent some time hanging with the laborers whose job it was to carry away the acres of red carpeting, portable chandelier holders, and gold spray-painted pseudo-Greek plywood columns before I was brusquely ejected from the premises by a foreman who was none too happy to have an outsider witness the working man's efforts that make such extravagance possible. He probably also heard the part where I was half-jokingly fomenting insurrection against the higher castes.

I returned to the guesthouse to relax. As the Danes and I amused ourselves chatting with the children, one of Guddu's Indian friends literally brought a puppy over to play. This place is too good to be true.

The next day I made a mammoth tour of the southern Aravallis, traveling deep into the rural heart of the hills past farms where oxen still raised irrigation water in a wheel and women carried buffalo-sized piles of leafy green vegetables on their heads. The road was less than a full lane wide, and my driver, whose name I could not discern through his phlegmatic and mumbled Mewari, was a simple and shy man who somehow navigated this road without being forced off a cliff by herds of sheep. As we got even deeper into the hills the farms gave way to wilderness. Leopards were said to be around. I saw only apes. The Hanuman monkeys are so human in their behavior it is almost creepy. Kumbhalgarh and Ranakpur were both amazing.

Returning to Udaipur again I made my way to an old mansion that now houses a cultural museum, including a multi-room turban gallery. A turban gallery. I had to see it. Within this turban gallery, which to my satisfaction contained many fine turbans, was no other than the World's Largest Turban. I can die happy.

I am however, more likely to die in an Indian prison, as any one of the several netcafe owners who refused to print the requisite hundreds of copies of my gazette-sheet libeling the Maharaja --as among other things a pedophile, a financier of terrorism, and a werewolf-- could easily report me to the authorities.

Finally, after several more days of vegetation, it was time to leave. I said my goodbyes to Guddu and the Danes, to Rajit and Moniga and the smiling old matron. I conducted some quick business and went to retrieve my things from my room. As I left, the last thing I saw was little Jheeni riding a live tortoise along the balcony.

Udaipur will be missed.

Quickie (Dec. 2)

My inspection of the southern fringe of Rajasthan continues. This work is exhausting. From my base in Udaipur I travel hundreds of kilometers every day to see remote temples and forts then come back and write travel articles well into the night. Having for the short term exhausted my supply of complaints about bus travel, I shall refrain from repeating myself and further defaming popular deities.

As you know I'm also not supposed to repeat what I write for work, and contrary to popular belief I am not a bottomless pit of biting remarks about derelict castles. I have other things to dedicate my mind to as well, such as making friends, doing my historical research, planning my future itinerary, endearing myself to Indian women, and in general actually having a life. So in lieu of a joke comparing Chittaurgarh's breached ribbon-like walls to a desecrated chastity ring or whatever, please feel free to peruse the photos I have posted of Chittaurgarh, Khumbalgarh, Ranakpur, and Udaipur. I'll give a little info about each.

Chittaurgarh was formerly the most strategic fort in all of India. Then it had a bad spell of repeatedly falling and the Maharaja of Mewar built his new capital at Udaipur. Though massive (being about 5km in length), Chittaurgarh is mostly empty grass interspersed by the few buildings the Mughals didn't burn to the ground. Rather ironically its most famous surviving feature is the Tower of Victory. I scoff. I would say spare yourselves the visit unless you're a huge history buff.

Khumbalgarh, on the other hand, is a truly awesome fort located on such a remote and inhospitable hilltop that in 400 years of use it was held by enemy forces for a total of 48 hours. Located several hours' drive on a one-lane road up into the depths of the Aravalli mountains, its staggering 36 kilometers of walls are a gargantuan fuck-you to any army that humped its gear through the rugged wilderness to attack it. Within the massive fort are numerous Hindu and Jain temples, spectacular views, an impressive citadel, a couple villages, and abandoned land reclaimed by villagers for farming within the walls. Probably the best fort in all of Rajasthan, and I have been to a crapload of forts in Rajasthan.

Ranakpur is a remote Jain temple in a little valley separated from Khumbalgarh by some very nasty hills. Its fine carvings and beautifully balanced proportions make it probably also the finest temple I have seen in Rajasthan so far (or in India for that matter), and I have seen even more Rajasthani temples than Rajasthani forts. Go there.

I'll have more to say about Udaipur later. Right now I am quite busy in my quest to publicly slander the Maharaja of Mewar. Namaste.