Motorcycle Trip in India!

Wow it is like a dream come true - we rented a motorcycle and drove it into the country. It was a little 100cc bike, a TVS Star; just a tiny thing really but it could do 40kph comfortably.

So we started off from Udaipur and made our way north to Ranakpur, where we saw a massive Jain temple. It was a huge affair, and we rode the bike into a parking lot and changed into our flip-flops (us being experienced temple visitors we know that it is customary to remove footwear before entering). The main temple is made entirely of marble, is three stories high and has 1444 intricately, uniquely carved columns inside. Not just that, but the temple is open to the air on each level, and not just windows but huge swaths of open space - the great domes themselves create spaces that span all three floors. It is just tremendous.

We stayed at a place called the Roopam Hotel in Ranakpur. It was nice and cheap, and we were very pleased to have somewhere to put our heads that wasn't a tent.

The next morning we woke up and with our boiled eggs stowed safely away (for a later snack) we headed for Kumbhalghar. But wait a minute, I'm making all of this sound too easy. Motorcycling in India isn't actually hard, but there are some rules to pay attention to that aren't the same in the west.

1. most roads are one lane, with rocky/sandy/muddy shoulders
2. the biggest vehicle always has the right of way
3. big vehicles are usually nice and give motorcycles time to get out of the way (they don't like the smears on the windshield)
4. if you are overtaking a car, you honk
5. if you are overtaking a motorcycle, you honk
6. if you are overtaking a bicycle, you honk
7. if you are overtaking a pedestrian, you honk
8. if you are overtaking a cow, goat, sheep or dog, you honk and go slowly
9. if you are approaching a blind corner or hill, you honk
10. it is apparently okay to pass people on blind corners or hills, except when honking is heard from opposing traffic (see rule 4)
11. when an oncoming car flashes its lights, it means it is not stopping so get the hell out of the way
12. little kids will sometimes yell "namaste" (Hello/Goodbye) or "Tata" (Goodbye)
13. little kids will sometimes throw things at you

Navigation is a bit of a challenge, because 95% of all traffic signs are in Hindi, and I only know the characters for these letters: B, R, F. Thankfully we were going to "R"anakpur the first day, and then back to Udaipu"R" the second day. :) People are pretty helpful on the road, sometimes I would just slow down and shout "Udaipur?" and they would laugh and point where I was supposed to go.

So we were going to Kumbalgarh the next day. It was a fantastic ride, the bike performed well (at 40kph, sometimes 50 if we went downhill) and when we go to the fort our jaws just dropped. This was the biggest, hugest, most massive fort we have ever seen. The ramparts go on for 36km around the countryside, the wall itself was constructed around 1450. The palace that tops the mountain was built around 1850 and they call it the Cloud Palace, because during monsoons it sits in the clouds. Walking around we saw some tremendous views, and there was even a marching band...as always.

India Motorcycles: Ranakpur and Kumbalgarh

We were riding through the country, and we saw some beautiful countryside as this part of India gets some rain, as opposed to Jaisalmer that hasn't seen a drop of rain in 5 years. Something neat was water wheels, driven by some form of beast (cow, bull, buffalo) and a huge set of gears that pulls water out of a well and into a trough. On a related note (to the beasts) the country people have devised some use for cow dung as they collect it, pat it onto rocks for it to dry, and then pile it up into tall towers of these brown cakes. One day I will learn the true purpose, but I suspect it is for fuel.

Lastly, pretty much everyone out here waved at us, shouted at us, said "namaste/tata". A couple boys did some weird dancing as we rode by, one waggled his ass into the road, and not just a few kids (mostly girls) threw things at us. One old man threw both arms up into the air and waved them about in some kind of a dance, I guess he was happy to see us!

When we got back to Udaipur we wanted to drop off the bike, but there was some kind of huge parade and the entire center of town was blocked off with thousands and thousands of people. We nearly got trampled but a nice woman took pity on us poor confused tourists and held Leah against the wall while the throngs of people flowed past. What a weird night, I have no idea what the parade was for but they had these huge floats that were probably 40 feet high, it reminded Leah of the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters just trundling down the streets as the floats careened from one side to the other.

We're off to Bangalore tomorrow!

Udaipur - The White City

We had lots of fun here, first arriving at about 5am after a night-bus. We took a SLEEPER bus which I think would totally catch on in Canada, although here in India the roads are made up more of potholes than pavement so sleeping is somewhat of a misnomer. Our tour book said that this is called the white city because of the white-wash they use on the buildings, and you can definitely see that from the Monsoon Palace on the hill.

We've only been here for two days and already I feel like I live here. :) This is a fun little town and there is a RIVER of water, compared to the parched city of Jaisalmer that we just came from. Today we hired a rickshaw driver to take us around the tourist sites - you can see some of my pictures here:

Udaipur, India

So that's it for now, we're planning to rent a motorcycle tomorrow and drive into the country to see another fort, and maybe some more Jain temples. We have our train and plane tickets to get us to Bangalore on the 1st of February, and we can start the southern part of our Indian adventure.

I'll drop in again soon!

Jaisalmer; Gateway to the great Thar Desert

Yes we went on a camel safari and it was fantastic. :) Here are pictures:

Camel Safari

As a side note Jaisalmer puts itself forward as the Golden city, but this is neither here nor there because as far as I can tell that is just the colour of the soil-based plaster they use on the outside walls. Nonetheless, it does have a golden hue when seen at sunset from the aptly named Jaisalmer Fort.

We arrived at 5am from the night train (third class A/C sleeper car) and were snatched up by the offer of a cheap ride to a hotel at 5am when the air was veeerrry cold. We went right to sleep and woke up at around 11am to figure out what kind of a camel tour we would do. We interviewed a few post-tourists, and talked to three different outfits and eventually settled on the renowned Mr Desert.

All was settled, and we were at the Sahara Travels booth at 9am for our camel safari. First thing was a jeep ride into the desert, our driver's name was Leeloo and he immediately liked Leah, because apparently their names mean the same thing in Hindi - a gift! We popped into a Jain temple that had been reclaimed as Hindu, and then we were on a one hour ride into the real desert. We passed by a few very humble villages on the way.

The camels were not very comfortable at first, although by the second day I became quite accustomed to the extremely accentuated sway of their walk. My camel's name was Pallo, and Leah rode Johnny. We had two guides who rode the other camel. These guys did everything for us, they cooked lunch which was rice, some spicy goulash of some kind and fresh chapatis. We were totally stuffed because they wouldn't let us get away without eating pretty much everything they made, which was loads.

During the day we just sat on the camels taking in the visual expanse of desert, sometimes covered in hardy plants, and sometimes barren dunes. At night we slept in the dunes, on the sand. Unfortunately this kindof sucked because the sand was really hard and we were very uncomfortable. In hindsight, I would have asked for more blankets and just loaded them up on the ground before we crashed. Mr. Desert's mom sent a home-cooked Indian meal to us which was very filling although I don't have any idea what it was (except for two spicy eggplants)
because it was so dark.

The next day we packed up and headed back into civilization. In the morning they had the camels gallop, which was not comfortable at all but by the afternoon it was too hot for that so we just walked and I tried to regain what composure I had. After it was all said and done, Leeloo picked us up and drove us to Karnataka, an abandoned village, one of 84 that were completely abandoned all at the same time over 350 years ago.

Karnataka and the other 84 villages were populated entirely by the Brahmans, the holy caste of Indian society. The story goes that India's Prime Minister at the time was a very bad man, and he seized power from the local Maharajah by killing all of his key supporters. Once he had local power, he used it to extort beautiful women from the villages, and when he walked into Karnataka he saw the leader's beautiful daughter and decided he wanted to marry her. After his negotiations failed, the town met and decided that knowing his behavior and that he would take the daughter by force the entire town and all their friends in the other 84 villages left on the same day and moved out of Rajasthan entirely - never to return.

When we got back to Jaisalmer, we found a great little place called the Jeet Mahal hotel and it was the prettiest, most Indian hotel we have stayed at yet - and just Ru 300! This is middle of the road for us, I think we spent Ru 550 one night and as little as Ru 150 some nights.

Jaisalmer, India

The next morning our hotel manager convinced us to go to this local pavilion that had girls dancing in traditional outfits, and to our surprise they had a series of floats that went by, some of them celebrating Indian successes, some humorously showing the differences between our ways of life, and some pushing ideas like recycling and other social ideas. Quite a neat event - the pics are above!