Rajasthan, March 2011

After I finished my masters in Sweden I went back to India in for a break of 6 months to wait for the contract and documents of PhD position from Trieste, Italy. I have always been attracted to places rich in nature or history. I love to see places having traces or ruins of past civilizations. India is full of such places and Rajasthan is one of them. It was just before holi 'the festival of colours' that we (me and Vishal) decided to travel to Rajasthan and celebrate our colourful festival in the colourful state of India.

It was March 16th 2011, I took a bus from Allahabad to Lucknow as we had booked an overnight bus from  Lucknow to Jaipur. According to the plan I was supposed to be in Lucknow by 11.30am but the machine broke at the mid-way at Batohi so we waited for another bus and finally reached Lucknow at around 2.30pm. Vishal was there to receive me at the Alambagh bus station, we met and went for lunch in Tunday followed by a short visit to his place where we relaxed a bit and rushed back for our bus at 5.30pm to Jaipur. The bus left the Alambagh bus depot at around 5.30pm after a few kms we suffered a flat tire and then I knew the day wasn't for me.

We reached Jaipur early morning at 5.00am after looking for a hotel we found one named Hotel Vinner point, it was a budget hotel and was walking distance from the bus station so we checked-in and slept. After freshening up we went out to grab some breakfast and also to enquire about the tours offered by RTDC office at the bus station. We were on time and we bought 2 tickets for the city tour, we had enough time to grab a quick breakfast of  1 cup of tea with some spicy moong daal pakodas. In that city tour we saw the Central Museum, the Jantar Mantar, the City Palace, Amer fort, Jalmahal and Laxmi Narayan temple. It was very hot but a great tour in the historic city. The center of attraction of the day was Amer fort and Jantar Mantar. It is a huge fort with a nice view of the city, it gave me an idea of how rich and royal India was. It shows a blend of hindu and muslim architecture. JantarMantar observatory shows how rich India was in scientific knowledge. No wonder why India is developing rapidly in science and technology, it runs in the blood (or genes, so to say). It was 8.30 in the evening when we reached in our room after dinner and called it a day. Next day we had Rajasthani thali as our lunch that included daal bati churma, gatte ki sabji and rice later in the day we went to see Hawa Mahal on our own and roamed around in the pink city. We had a train to Udaipur at 11.30pm that night so we came back to the hotel relaxed and got ready for the journey. But after reaching the train station we came to know that the train was late and it kept on being delayed on n on n on until it was 4.00am. I was completely pissed of on indian railways and decided to not to take any intercity trains after that.

Kulfi @ Fateh Sagar Lake

Holi

We reached Udaipur at around 10am on 19th March, from the station we took an auto which took us to Hotel Vrindavan. It was again a budget hotel and easy to reach. We talked to the same auto driver for a city tour in the afternoon, so we freshened up, had lunch and got ready by 1pm to see another beautiful city. We saw Fateh Sagar lake, Maharanapratap monument, ruins of Motimahal, Saheliyo ki badi, the City Palace and  Jagdish temple. We loved the Fateh Sagar lake and Motimahal, spent some time sitting at the ruins and seeing the city and the lake and then a kulfi down near the lake. Since it was the day just before holi, the city was getting prepared for it. Late in the evening we went out for a walk and to have dinner, we saw holika burning in the residential area nearby the hotel. After returning back from the dinner we thought of going up on the terrace, the view from the terrace was amazing, the City Palace was lit-up with its reflection on Pichola lake. At that moment we decided to go to the Pichola lake, we went down and found an auto which took us to the lake. We sat there for almost an hour under the clear night sky with twinkling stars, the lake infront of us full of the reflection of light from the decorated City Palace and a calm soothing air. I bought a book of short stories of Jeffrey Archer to read the next day and Vishal planned to watch cricket world cup match as we didn't plan to play colours. Next morning was usual we went to the terrace to see the people starting to play colours. We didn't want to sit back instead went out to the Jagdish temple for a walk, while walking we saw many people playing colours, even many foreign tourists were enjoying the colours. So we decided to play as well, bought some dry colours and continued walking, many people threw colours on us and threw colours on them and finally reached the temple. The temple square was full of people playing colours, throwing colours on each other and greeting each other. This is what I love about festivals, to see how strangers, indifferent of the race, colour and nationality, interact with each other and share their happiness, serving the primary purpose of a festival of bringing peace to the society we live in. After playing colours we walked to the Pichola lake and sat there in the sun. I loved that day because it was a beautiful surprise as it was not planned. That evening we went to check out the buses to Mount Abu which was our next destination.

@ Arbuda devi

Exterior of Dilwara 

We had a bus next morning for Mount Abu that took around 3 hours. The view during the way was good, was better for Vishal as this was his 1st mountain tour. He was very excited looking around and showing me the scenes. We stayed in Mount Abu for 2 days, we reached on 21st afternoon. That evening we walked around the town and the Nakki lake. Next day we booked for the city tour offered by RTDC, we had a funny guide and bus full of people. That day we started our tour with Arbud dev temple followed by Dilwara temples, Arbuda devi temple, Honeymoon point finally arriving back to Nakki lake. All the points were great, rich in scenic beauty but Dilwara temples were outstanding, it carries an awesome interior that I never thought of, those detailed carvings on single piece of rock were unbelievable. Unfortunately camera was not allowed inside so couldn't capture those masterpieces. We had a gujrati thali in lunch and the same evening we had a bus for Ajmer that we boarded around 6 pm.

Ajmer Shareef

Another overnight bus journey ended at 4.30am, we freshened up at Ajmer railway station. Took an auto to the Ajmer bus station from where we took a bus to Pushkar. We spent the 1st half of the day in Pushkar in seeing the lake and the Brahma temple. By noon we were at Ajmer Shareef payed a visit there and returned back to the bus station to catch a bus to Jodhpur. That day was full of confusions because of the Gurjar movement the trains passing through Agra were getting cancelled and we were wondering if our train from Jodhpur to Lucknow got cancelled or not but anyhow after several phone calls and an hour under sun we discovered that everything was fine with our train so we headed to Jodhpur. At the bus station we booked an AC bus to Jodhpur but we both needed to pee and while doing that we missed our bus so we bought another pair of tickets of normal bus. Vishal's idea was to catch the AC bus in half way bus stop and we were lucky to get it as planned by Mr. Vishal. To celebrate that we bought ice-creams.

Mehrangarh Fort

After a day of adventure we reached Jodhpur by afternoon and found a economy hotel to spend the night. Late in the evening we went out for dinner, we walked through the main old market and the clock tower, we saw the Mehrangarh fort. We walked to see more of the city and found a small mall where we had dinner. While walking back home I was thinking of the great time we had and was upset that the trip was coming to an end but had hope of having many more such trips in future.

Next day, on 24th March, we boarded our train back to Lucknow. That was the day India was playing against Australia in World cup cricket series so everyone was pretty excited, we met 2 co-passengers from Denmark Anna and Naina who were travelling to Varanasi and had some problem in calling the hotel for booking coz they were not aware of the predecessor "2" that we put for calling landline numbers in U.P. We also met a family from Lucknow who were also going to Lucknow for vaccations. Finally we reached our destination at around 3.00am. Thus, a lovely trip came to an end leaving memories that we will cherish forever.