Jodhpur is known for its bright-blue buildings and spice trade. I remember it for charming narrow streets, outstandingly tasty samosas, and the nice German couple I tagged along with. Fabian was an easygoing traveler and Sophia gave me mint oil to relieve massive sinus congestion. We had super-thick lassis that required spoons to eat and walked about the hills and rocky escarpments that contour the area. I wished we could have gone on together but we were going in opposite directions.
I continued south and east to Ranakpur, site of a magnificently carved marble Jain temple. It had the spare feeling of Roman ruins: cool, echoey, austere in spite of meticulous detail worked into the columns and ceilings. That evening I stayed in the mountains, feeling posh writing up notes from the day on a mattress next to the pool, fading golden light slanting across the notebook.
Continuing the slap-dash journey, I headed to Udaipur, a former capital city built among several artificial lakes. Its claims of comparison with Venice are overblown, but there were some lavish palaces and hotels on their own little islands. I learned a bit about the city and caught up on World Cup standings with a local, but made a swift exit when he steered the conversation to reading my emotions and offered energy healing.
Such offered increased ten-fold in Pushkar, a holy town on a holy lake boasting more than 500 temples, including the only Brahma temple in the world. Old and young hippies proliferated, as well as reverenced langurs and pigeons -- the poop of which compounded with the dust to cause even dirty me to blanch. The monkey temple outside Jaipur, however, wins the distinction of place I most wished to keep shoes on.
Though I mostly walked around the old center, Jaipur throbbed with the vitality and traffic of a big city. Once again I wove through scads of tuktuks as they wove through rivers of cars. Bazaars extended for miles, street food beckoned at all hours from every corner. My favorite place was a tranquil cafe that displayed the owner's artwork; my second favorite place was an outdoor museum of old astrological time keeping devices.
At this point, I hit a snafu. There had been a scheduling error and I had to race to reach a tiger preserve. But fate was not on my side: a big-wig political rally closed the road. It was like a carnival, with giant tents, everyone off work and gathered in crowds, and music on loudspeakers. A random guy was procured to try to get me through via scooter, but 40 miles of backroads proved too much to cover in the limited time. I was sufficiently novel a phenomenon that four of the driver's friends crowded on another scooter to accompany us the first ten miles.
After a good deal of chaos and confusion, I finished it all off with the Taj Mahal. We drove past vast fields of yellow mustard flowers dotted by women in colorful clothing, massive industrial areas plopped down apropos of nothing, and into hazy Agra so I could train my eyeballs on the classic curves of the immense tomb. It was quite beautiful in the pinkish sunset, and despite the crowds I found a few quiet spots from which to take in the spectacle.
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