All photographs copyright Maya Wallach, AliaTerra
I am in the back room of a true Indian Internet cafe -- four 333Mhz PCs behind a restaurant on a tiny busy street in Udaipur. It feels very funny to be on a computer. I'm dressed all in local-made clothes, blue tie died shirt -- rather short, so I'm wearing a blue sari tied up high on my waste. I didn't think I'd dare walk outside in this, but it was so comfortable ... what the heck.
Everything has been very comfortable. No problems, no hassles, no confusion. This is India?? We had more problems in Copenhagen where they wouldn't let us off the plane because the wind was gusting at 60knots and the gangways couldn't be moved into position. After our 8 1/2 hour flight from Seattle we had to sit for 2 more hours on the plane until they moved us into a hanger to disembark. Despite the wind, we took a stroll through downtown Copenhagen, saw the opera house, the wooden ships in the canal, the blocks and blocks of block apartments with nice fancy windows but bathrooms in the basements. We were guided by two friends of mine from Seattle who let us crash on their very comfy guest-bed and fed us got us back to the airport just in time for our flight to Delhi. At Delhi we had to wait in line for customs for an hour, which gave us plenty of time to make friends with a black Englishwoman named Joss Gulliver. She was winging it alone around the world, so we invited her to stay a day or two with us, which she did. Our hotel in Delhi was fabulous. A modern building made of red sandstone slabs with an amazing interior courtyard and green lawns around it, it was completely silent at night. Ahh.... (Ok, the hot water didn't work for the shower, but they brought us a bucket and that was marvelous. We spent the day driving around Delhi and we discovered a new definition for the word optimist: the person who paints the lane lines on roads in Delhi! Ha. Still, our driver was very good: calm and quiet and a smooth driver. We took him with us (or vice-versa) to Agra the next day, along with Joss. Got to the Taj at 2pm. Blindingly bright. Discovered a very neat thing inside: if you hold a flashlight up to the inlaid flowers in the dark of the inside chamber, the flowers light up. The orange carnelion especially. Looks incredible. Around 3:30 we headed out. But couldn't. I kept looking back and seeing how it was changing with every glance as the light changed. So instead of going on to the Red Fort we plunked down at stared at the Taj through sunset. It was marvelous. But not as marvelous as the next morning. We arrived at 6:30am and the fog was too thick to see anything. We walked forward through the fog. A breeze blew the mist and there above us the hazy curve of a dome appeared. Soft and just barely pink, floating in the fog. A single minaret drifted beside it. It looked like a fantasy, a dream made visible, a vision of such perfect beauty.... It only lasted a few seconds. The fog blew back in and did not lift for hours. But oh what few seconds. Mmmmmm. We drove on to a red sandstone fort (there is a LOT of red sandstone here!) called Fatehpur Sikri, which was very cool. Green gardens, water channels, incredible carvings. Then we bicyled through a bird sanctuary: pelicans, eagles, painted storks and lots of things I've never seen before. Then we continued to Jaipur. My biggest surprise so far has been how much India reminds me of SouthEast Asia. And it reminds Mia of Mexico. The third world thing. Honking drivers, dirt on the sides of the roads, piles of rubble everywhere. Garbage piled up beside homes. But really, we were expecting so much worse. The honking is (or seems) much less than Burma. We only saw a handful of people taking a dump beside the road. The beggers and touts are there but not difficult. The food has been great and cost nothing. (The first night in Delhi we ate at an outdoor restaurant with a herd of 300 deer grazing a few feet away.) Jaipur was chaos. Utter madness: packed packed streets. But we just drove to our hotel and, since it was already dusk, had a perfect excuse to stay inside. It was a very cool hotel -- a honeycomb of hidden rooms, courtyards and narrow stairways. Very neat. Met a great couple there, from Italy and Switzerland, talked in French and English. We'll meet them again in a day or two in Udaipur. This morning we left Jaipur at dawn and arrived with no hassles at all at our fancy-ass hotel in Udaipur. Udaipur is lovely. Even flying in, the country side looked more put together, more lovely, almost like southern France. Driving into town through quarried hillsides, you could see rows and rows of neatly made stone walls -- no mortar. A good metaphor I thought: they take the piles of rubble and organize them. Unlike the other areas we'd seen. Udaipur itself feels like Spain, or maybe Greece. A warren of narrow alleys through interconnected adobe buildings, lots of open-air apartments and rooftop restaurants. All on a lake with views of ancient palaces and temples. Quite incredible. Not clean or in perfect shape, but ... it has lots of character, and the people are calm and friendly. We wandered through town and found ... an elephant! Painted and strolling along. It stared me calmly in my eye. Mmm. I'm told I MIGHT be able to find one to ride here.... I'll try tomorrow. We have seen lots of camels. They are so incredible to watch to watch. Mmmmm. I can't wait. But ... tomorrow it is horses, through a wildlife sanctuary with leopards and wolves! We are very very well and recommend this to all! Maya PS -- well, ok, the internet connection could be improved here. Internet cafes everywhere, but WHAT a slow connection! And crashing computers. Sigh. Ah well. If it is any slower they'll start their nightly showing of Octopussy. (Which is shown at all the low-end restaurants in town because it has about 30 minutes of Udaipur.) Humph. I've just spent half an hour trying to get Yahoo to send this. Won't work. I'll have to have Sandro forward this to all of you!