We haven't yet learned how to stay human when assembled in masses. -Lewis Thomas, physician and author (25 Nov 1913-1993)
I'd prefer one with either wine or malt bottles, preferably full ones! Perhaps these ladies could help. They seem to have quite an ability for arrangement!
Day 29, Field Report: Thursday, November 29th: Mount Abu to Jodhpur!
Up when my alarm went off, a few minutes after Lady Darjeeling who had taken a look outside to gauge the day. Staff had not re-stocked the java so I decided to have a cup of Darjeeling along with Lady Dar. Quite enjoyed it although I took mine with sugar, unlike Her Ladyship. I did most of my packing while she showered and once she was finished, I followed, ever the obsequeoid! Sent a few messages before we joined Jugos and Lynne for breakfast. Glad to find Lynne feeling better as she was quite ill after dinner last night, unfortunately.
While I was enjoying my Masala Omelette and baked beans, Cora Lee was planning our next trip with the couple from Kenya. Dipti and Kiran live in Nairobi and are here on a Jain pilgrimage. Apparently there is a large Jain population there, 9,000. They are driving themselves so must be used to the “rules” of the roads here. Dipti likes to eat street-food but Kiran won’t allow it so we are wondering about the effects of yesterday’s foray into local fare! They have tasted in Napa/Sonoma so I guess I won’t mind staying with them. At first I was worried about freeloading as most Jains don’t drink alcohol. Tour Leader Cora Lee exchanged email addresses and we said goodbye to return to the room to finish packing.
Ready to go right at 9:00 am when Ashok pulled up in the van. When Lady Dar was settling the bill she witnessed a rather ugly incident. There had been a large tour bus of German tourists staying the night and the group leader made a nasty scene when he found that he had been charged for his first beer, claiming that everywhere else in India it had been free. He went on and on about how he was bringing in much business, etc., but the Manager wouldn’t budge. Corinne said she had seen him earlier, smoking like a fiend. She could also smell alcohol on his breath so not a particularly pleasant individual and certainly not someone I’d like to have leading any group I was part of. Liked th epart about free beer, however so must try it sometime!
At any rate I learned all this once we were underway as I asked how much she had had to pay for WiFi access. I was going to pay once we’d checked in, (I had been in withdrawal ever since Udaipur!), but Manager said we could settle up when we checked out. Turned out we were not charged a single rupee. Not sure if they forgot to add it to our bill or if the Manager waived the user fee. Jugos and I had had a very pleasant conversation with him, the night before, when we were having our post-prandials in the spacious living room. He has worked for the hotel for over twenty years and he and his family live, on site, in quarters provided for all the staff.
Furthermore, we’d asked for a pack of playing cards last night, after dinner, thinking we might play a few hands of Three-Handed Bridge on the patio and he said he would send the cards to our room. They never arrived and so when a young man came by to bring fresh towels we asked him for some playing cards. He returned a few minutes later bringing us two bowls of plain curd! Hard to keep from bursting out laughing but we managed to contain ourselves, thanking him profusely but declined his well-intentioned service. Lost in Translation strikes again!
We retraced our route, down the mountain out fo Mount Abu, past Monkey Mile, marveling, again, at the families of Langurs sitting on the retaining walls, looking quizzically at all which passed, as we braved the curves and sharp hairpin turns. Had seen a huge male at the temple yesterday. I tried to snap a photo of him, high on the ramparts of the wall near the entrance but he leapt down to street level and bounded through the lane we were walking on, paying little heed to the throngs, before i could capture him in pixels. I was taken aback by the size of his hunches, by far the largest monkey we'd seen, the others much more delicate of face, limb and torso. Further along, near one of the many pull-outs, we chortled to see a car which had stopped, presumable to take pictures of the view or Langurs, or both, covered withe the latter!
Back to the village at the bottom of Mount Abu to proceed in a northeasterly direction, through quite arid flatland, covered with fairly regular scrub of some sort. Half an hour or so of this landscape and Ibrahim just stopped for us so that we could snap a few pictures of a water-buffaloe driven water-wheel, raising water by the bucket from a small weir to irrigate the nearbye fileds, I presume. Still pretty dry looking landscape here. Gave an old lady, waiting below the platform on which the buffaloe circled, 20 rupees for the privilege of taking the snaps. Hard to imagine that life is little more than subsistence living given the tiny villages and stony fields. More well-built walls demarcating the plots than we have seen before. Probably do quite well with a stoneboat franchise here!
Another hour or so later we left the plain we were on to descend, quite steeply at times, through deep canyon gorges, towards a valley floor. This on a virtual ribbon of tarmac and Ashok had to pull onto the unpaved, quite rocky shoulder, to allow some vehicles to pass. Very, very winding road but still most pleasant. More Langurs, this time cloaking a small shrine to Hanuman, appropriately. Unfortunately, we were past this delightful scene before I could snap any shots. Little traffic so that was certainly a very good thing, given the driving circumstances.
Shortly after we reached level ground we reached our first destination, Ranakpur to visit two Jain temples there. I cobbled together a bit of a description of the largest, (Said to be the most spectacular of the Jain temples.), as I really knew nothing about them at all, (Including the one in Mount abu, of course.), sad to report:
The renowned Jain temple at Ranakpur is dedicated to Tirthankara Adinatha.
Local legend has it that Dharma Shah, a local Jain businessperson, started construction of the temple in the 15th century following a divine vision. The temple honors Adinath, the first Tirthankar and founder of the Jain religion. The town of Ranakpur and the temple are named after the provincial ruler monarch, Rana Kumbha who supported the construction of the temple.
Light colored marble has been used for the construction of this grand temple which occupies an area of approximately 60 x 62 meters. The temple, with its distinctive domes, shikhara, turrets and cupolas rises majestically from the slope of a hill. Over 1444 marble pillars, carved in exquisite detail, support the temple. The pillars are all differently carved and no two pillars are the same. It is also said that it is impossible to count the pillars. Also all the statues face one or the other statue. There is one beautiful carving made out of a single marble rock where there 108 heads of snakes and numerous tails. One cannot find the end of the tails. The image faces all four cardinal directions. In the axis of the main entrance, on the western side, is the largest image.
The temple is designed as chaumukha, ie. with four faces. The construction of the temple and quadrupled image symbolize the Tirthankara's conquest of the four cardinal directions and hence the cosmos. The architecture and stone carvings of the temple is based on the Ancient Mirpur Jain Temple at Mirpur in Rajasthan.
The construction is well documented in a 1437 CE copper-plate record, inscriptions in the temple and a Sanskrit text Soma-Saubhagya Kavya. Inspired by a dream of a celestial vehicle, Dhanna Shah, from Ghanerao a Porwal, commenced its construction, under the patronage of Rana Kumbha, then ruler of Mewar. The architect who oversaw the project was named Deepaka. There is an inscription on a pillar near the main shrine stating that in 1439 Deepaka, an architect, constructed the temple at the direction of Dharanka, a devoted Jain. When the ground floor was completed, Acharya Soma Sundar Suri of Tapa Gachha supervised the ceremonies, which are described in Soma-Saubhagya Kavya. The construction continued until 1458AD.
The temple was renovated time to time. Some famililies supported the construction of devakulikas and mandaps. The descendants of Dharanashah now mainly live in Ghanerao. The temple has been managed by the Anandji Kalyanji Pedhi trust in the past century. There is also a small Sun temple which is managed by the Udaipur royal family trust.
The description above does little to convey the sheer majesty of the temple which honors Adinath. Although it is so large that I spent the hour we were there without ever bumping into my travel companions, (I did catch a glimpse of Lady Dar, briefly.), one never feels that one isn't in an extremely intimate, welcoming, soothing space. To wander through the virtual forest of pillars, gazing up at the stunning carvings which adorn the domes, is an emotionally dizzying experience. The feel of the cool, flawlessly smooth flagstones beneath one's bare feet is calming and ever so therapeutic. In spite of the large number of visitors, silence, (requested as this is a living temple), prevails, for the most part.
Although we carried audio guides, (Very, very good sound and voice quality, I hasten to add.), I didn't listen for most of the time I spent inside. Felt liberating to simply wander the sacred spaces without having to be informed but rather allow the stupendous architecture and intricate carvings to speak unmediated, directly to one's senses and emotional core. In fact, I did feel quite moved as I gazed and marveled. Without question, I left the confines of the temple, if not in a state of bliss, then quietly content, feeling a sense of peace and order.
I was the first of the group to exit and sat on a stone bench, in the shade, opposite the entrance steps, to continue to drink in the singular beauty of the domes and pillars, the shimmering marble back-dropped by the hazy green of the surrounding hills. When Cora Lee joined me we strolled to the much smaller, (tiny, in comparison), Sun temple. While I was circling the temple, Lady Dar actually saw and photographed a small snake that the attendant was chasing from the inner temple. The temple proper sits in the middle of a large, flat platform, reached by a series of stairs, and actually affords another wonderful view of the main temple. After Lynne and Peter joined us and had a quick walkabout, we returned to the van and set off to have lunch at a nearbye hotel.
As one might imagine, there are many hotels in the town, supporting the busy tourist trade which the temples generate. Ashok had informed us, the day before, that Luxe India was footing the bill for our lunch, so we were looking forward to the meal and we were not disappointed, either with the food, or the building itself. We crossed a fairly long, low bridge, over a dry stream-bed to an extremely well-appointed building, a pleasing, modern copy of what of we have come to learn is the Indo-Saracen style, set in beautiful gardens. Many weddings are taking place, after Dewali, and one was being held here. We could see where the wedding ceremony was to take place as the seats, tables and such were being readied as we entered the hotel. While eating the tasty lunch we could see, in the second-floor gallery above the restaurant, members of the wedding party, dashing back and forth along the hallway.
When we left the hotel, about an hour later, I stopped to chat to a young woman outside the entrance, asking her if she was attending the wedding. She was, in fact, and she told me that the bride was from California, the groom from India. She herself was from Mexico. At any rate, we said goodbye, wishing the wedding party well, and returned to our van. Much to our delight, just after crossing the bridge, we encountered a magnificently adorned elephant, waiting with its mahout, for the groom. According to Ashok, he would ride from there to the hotel and then the wedding ceremony would commence. A far cry from a decorated limo! Funnily enough, further along the road, in a different village, we passed another wedding party, this time with the handsome, brightly turbaned groom, sword and all, astride a horse, surrounded by family and friends.
We had a fairly long drive ahead of us, about three hours or so but most of it was on a national highway, 62, I believe, so it was not the bone-rattling journey that we had had to endure earlier in the day. By the time we reached the outskirts of Jodhpur it was past 6:00 pm and quite dark so we saw little, if anything, of the city, as we drove to our hotel, the Indana, a very modern edifice, in an area dedicated to quite a few different Army and Air Force units and HQ's, according the the names posted on the entrance ate we passed. Once we checked into the hotel and were escorted to our rooms, we decided we'd meet for a drink in a sitting area just outside our rooms. Lynne was quite tired so she didn't join us but the three of us enjoyed the cool evening breeze as Lady Dar and Jugos sipped beer while I preferred a G&T. We soon learned to halt our conversation as jet after jet roared over our heads.
At dinner, downstairs in the hotel restaurant, after a number of rounds of drinks, we discovered that the civilian airport, used by the military at certain times, is close by and fighters run regular reconnaissance sorties to the border between India and Pakistan, but a 120 km or so from Jodhpur. Cora Lee and I were immediately reminded of the time we stayed in San Diego, at the house of friends situated right in the flight path of the downtown airport there. Here the flights did not stop until close to 11:30 pm but one soon becomes somewhat accustomed, if not inured, to the noise, frighteningly loud when sitting outside or walking in the open hallways, somewhat muted when inside but still an assault on the eardrums. It had been a long day so we said goodnight to Dom Jugos, hoping Lynne was feeling better in the morning, and toddled off to bed ourselves.
Hi Corinne and Pat, how are you? Glad to hear you haven't been sick. Hope Lynn is feeling better. We are continuing to enjoy your wonderful travel diary. You are seeing so much. Rajasthan is my favourite state. It is colourful in so many ways. We went as far west as we could go and stayed in Jaisalmer. My mom and I went to explore the desert at Sam Sand Dunes and had a hysterical camel ride. Watching my mom on that awful, spitting camel trying to get off as the camel kneeled down made us both howl with laughter. It is a scene I will never forget.
We sat on a hill of sand and had a beer after our adventure. The sun disappeared into the desert and out of nowhere, a man and his son appeared playing music. That is India isn't it? It was a magical evening.
We have had cold, sunny weather for about a week which has been lovely. George's dear friends Kevin and Mairie visited us in Victoria last weekend. We had some wonderful walks and lots of delicious food. They had never been to Victoria but had been to Tofino a few times. They really enjoyed it.
We ended the weekend by taking them to Galiano. We had a fun lunch with Jake and his friends and then walked to the Point. We realized we might miss the ferry back to Vancouver if we spent a while longer on our walk. Suddenly, there was lots of laughter and excitement as they decided they could leave Monday morning to attend a conference and I decided I would be sick for the day.
We had a wonderful Sunday night listening to our favourite tunes and enjoying each other's company in the lovely warmth of of G's home. It made for a nice short week for me! I am enroute to Galliano tonight again for more beautiful sunshine and relaxation. Wishing you more good fun and travel. Hi to your pals and thanks for keeping us in the loop. love George and Jane xo
Patrick, Keep the most interesting write-ups and super photos coming - thoroughly enjoying them. Dawn
Patrick, what in the hell is this message about; I didn’t put in any credit card #s in my message to you. Or did I? You are being censored by your ex employer. Bill.
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Hi Pat, Looks as if you are having a great time over there. Many thanks for all the photos and the video -that was classified and censored from DD (dangerous denise). Also thanks for keeping us abreast of all your daily movements. I get the impression there is a vestige of old British colonialism in the life there?
We are in a sunny cool/cold period now, having got through a pretty good monsoon stretch before. We are well except Bills raging sciatic pain rages on relentlessly. My day, week, month and year were made earlier this morning - the surgeon’s office called with a date with him and his knife soon. I couldn’t be more relieved! Hi to Corrine and keep well. Keep your emails shorter and enjoy the sights and life of India more! Bill.
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