Easing Into Indian Life -- Day 10
Mood:  happy
Topic: Asia Trip
Greetings from Udaipur in the Rajasthan region of northwest India. We are finally easing into our trip and getting used to the uniqueness of Indian life (e.g. I'm at an Internet shop and just looked out the door to see an elephant walk by!). I'm feeling a bit of regret for the brutal honesty of my feelings conveyed during my adjustment period in the beginning of the trip. I do hope that they have not offended any of our Indian friends. While we still feel shocked and amazed at many of the ways of life here in India, we have begun to accept them more readily. Though I'm not sure we'll ever get used to the driving. Our driver, Anil, always says to us when we're making plans etc., "No hurry, no worry." So the other day I said to him, "Anil, when you drive, you hurry and I worry." He laughed.

We have been in India for ten days now. The best decision we made was to leave Delhi and hire a driver to take us around the Rajasthan region. While we are a bit spoiled by having all of our arrangements taken care of by our driver in advance it has made it possible for us to relax, take in as much culture as possible hassle-free, and see a huge region in a much shorter time period than using public transport. I do realize that once we begin the next part of our India journey and beyond, we will have another adjustment period of being our own tour guides and logistics coordinators.

We've spent the past two days in the Aravalli Mountains region -- green, lush, and rainy. Though the monsoon has been weak for five years straight now, and the two lakes that make Udaipur a magical city on lakes are both dried up. The palace in the middle of Lake Pichola that was once accessed by boats and fully surrounded by water, can now be walked to.

What an amazing difference water can make in the way of life for people and their affluence. The incredible desperation that we saw in the dry desert parts of Rajasthan seems to not exist on the same level in Udaipur and Ranakpur. The interesting thing is that Molly and I noticed this exact same scenario during our cycling trip across the US -- in dry parts of the west -- Montana, Wyoming, eastern Washington -- people were very poor as the land was anything but fertile. The difference in India is that millions of people live in these dry areas, where as in America places like Montana are the least inhabited in the whole country.

Yesterday, we visited the Kembalgarh Fort tucked in the mountains on the way to Udaipur. The drive was hair raising, to say the least. For the first time since arriving to India, we had a positive encounter with local Indians -- the kind of story/interaction that used to happen with American travelers before we decided we could become an imperialist power. We were walking down the steep road from the fort, and some local school kids -- 14-15 years old -- ran up to us and asked if they could take their picture with us. They asked us where we were from and why we were there. One small boy told Molly that when he turns 25, it is his dream to visit America. He asked Molly where he should go, and of course we said DC. So Molly wrote down her name and e-mail on a piece of paper and told him to tell us if he ever came. Well he became the most popular boy in the crowd at that moment. The girls were so excited to see us, they smiled at us, told us we looked cool and wanted to shake our hands. I told them their English was great, and one girl said that her parents raised her (in this small mountain village!) to only speak English -- it is amazing how this minor difference will raise this young girl miles above so many of her fellow Indians.

We've seen some incredible structures over the past week. Palaces, forts, temples, havelis (private residences of the rich). The most intricate of all have been the Jain temples -- all hand carved with hundreds of pillars. The forts are astounding -- often sitting on top of hills that look impossible to access anyway, so why the need for a fort? One thing that I can't stop thinking of, and not to put down America, but our history and culture seems a bit bland compared to that of India and even other places I've visited and have been remembering. In India the food is spicy, colorful and intricate, in India the buildings are not only grand and beautiful as in many parts of America, but the detailed, back breaking artwork that covers every inch of their interior and often exterior makes our prettiest buildings look simple. What explains this source of incredible intricacy and detail in India?

We're off to Pushkar tomorrow -- home to a famous camel festival each year, which we'll miss by a few weeks. We hope in a week's time to be making our way north from Delhi to Rishikesh to see the Himalayas and possibly go trekking.

Hello to all!