Travels of the pretty pink suitcases - Part One

I should title this 'How to miss a connection and lose your luggage - Fly Qantas!!' but have decided that since whenever they actually managed to fly us, they did a good job, and looked after us pretty well even when they stranded us in Sydney, I shall treat them with some amount of kindness. Not much, mind you, just a little bit; those of you who know me, put it down to the Christmas spirit of giving or in this case, forgiving, floating around in the air and those of you who don't know me; why I'm the kindest, most forgiving soul in the universe anyways, what does a missed flight - or two - matter?

I've had a pretty good time so far. Wednesday was spent in Mumbai with a close friend. We did some shopping, some eating, some sleeping and a lot of chatting. Just the way to begin a great holiday. By Wednesday evening, I was at the airport, where my cuz and travel companion was waiting. Now, he's this seasoned international traveler - you wouldn't say it to see him, he looks just barely out of his teens and has this wide-eyed innocent look - but seasoned he is and that's good for a novice like me.

Let's see, where did we start off - oh yes, at the Qantas counter where the girl looked at his ticket and tried desperately to pronounce his name (the usual tongue-twisting Syrian Christian family name), gave up and addressed him as Mr. zzzzzzzz. The same place where I checked in my pretty pink suitcase. The pretty pink tote-bag travelled with me as hand baggage. The girl at the counter did put us through the third degree, asking us if we were carrying any plants, food, medicines or cosmetics. Well, I had medicine and cuz had toothpaste so we were both warned that these may be thrown out when we arrived in Australia. Didn't sound like too much of a problem; my medicines were accompanied by a prescription and what's a toothpaste after all?

So, pretty pink tote in hand, I landed up at the immigration counter. First major obstacle : My passport had less than 6 months validity and the officer looked me up and down and asked me 'What to do? What to do?' I looked at him with this pathetic 'oh god what to do' look and cuz looked at him with his 'wide-eyed innocent abroad' look and the guy decided that we were a waste of his time, so he allowed us to go.

Our flight was an hour and a half late so we killed time and a couple of beers and then found out there was another half hour to go. Yeah, realised that we would miss our Sydney-Melbourne connection anyway. Decided not to worry about it until we were actually there. Both of us turned out to be ardent Jet Airways fans and discovered that Qantas does not measure up in any way to that fantastic set of people. The flight was okay, though they did run out chicken and we ended up having rice and peas and paneer for dinner. Ugh!! Was way too hungry to do anything but eat it, so I did, but I can tell you I was not too happy about it. I slept, fitfully and woke up feeling kind of zonked. I had also woken up at night to parade up and down the aisles and wiggled my toes and rotated my ankles to keep DVT at bay. But it was a twelve-hour flight after all, and even with all of this, my ankles were slightly swollen - it had me worried for a while.

Sydney Airport took care of that problem. After we disembarked, it was one long unending walk. Seriously, anyone coming to Australia better be fit or register as an invalid and ask for a wheel chair. They make you walk miles to get from one counter to the next. We breezed through Australian customs and quarantine - I didn't lose my medicines and cuz didn't lose his toothpaste.

Okay, it's about 1 p.m. (Tasmanian time) and I am now too sleepy to keep going. Our day in Sydney and how we finally reached Devonport, Tasmania, will be covered in the next post.

You guys have a good-oh day!

Jantar Mantar Elaichi Chai

Sounds like you're in the middle of magic land, doesn't it? And me, I have this major weakness for magical stuff, be it hands or engineers!! Seriously, this chap Sawai Jai Singh II - simply extraordinary. That marvellous observatory is just sheer magic and wizardry. Although the guide was very careful to point out to us over and over that 'no, no not magic, science, science..this is science!! Jantar is machine Mantar is calculation not jadoo, not at all jadoo. Jai singhji he was mathematician, astrologer and engineer, not magician!!" And at this point he glared at me quite ferociously becaue I'd just breathed one more ecstatic... "oooooooh magical". I smiled and agreed 'yes,mathematician, not magician' very very humbly. Didn't want crossed wires and the guy thinking I was denigrating his hero by calling him a magician!!

Oh I just loved the place. That sundial!!! Worth the whole trip just to see the world's largest sundial. And accurate to two seconds. Wow!!I didn't have the energy to climb all those steps and anyway, the higher one is closed because the heights are dangerous but my nephews clambered all over it - the next day, of course, everyone was complaining of leg cramps - and leaned dangerously over the side waving to the camera. Those are the pictures we lost. All those instruments are in working order. And it's over 200 years old. And the guy built 5 observatories altogether, though the Jaipur one is the only complete one and the best maintained one!

This was one Jaipur monarch who did things other than play hide&seek with his wives, obviously. He's the one who founded Jaipur. As the guide told us - " Jai you see, king Jaisingh name, Jai, Jai.. and the city is Jai - Pur, so city of jai .. he is founder you know so city named like king name Jai, Jaipur!!" It's a dirty city now, but when he built it, it must have been beautiful, with its yellow walls and pink sandstone trim. I think it must have been much prettier than the dirty red paint they have now which they call pink.

We went up to the older fort also, up in the Aravalli range - theJaigarh Fort. That's over a thousand years old. And there's this cannon there called the Jaivaani - it's the largest cannon in the world. I know this is a strange thing to say about a destructive weapon but it is a piece of art. Just behind it is a rock pool whichis now almost empty but used to be filled with water. The soldiers who lit the cannon's wick had to run and throw themselves into the water to keep themselves from going deaf. But the irony, they never used the cannon except to test fire it once. Apparently people for a radius of 10kms went deaf!! Well, so they said... possible actually, when you see the size of that cannon.

It was pouring when we went up to see the cannon. And it's quite awalk - we didn't realise you could drive up there. So by the time we got there we were drenched and tired and all I wanted was a warm bath and coffee. That's one lesson I learnt - never drink coffee in North India, unless you want to hate the world for a time. They put cardammom in milk and drop a few grains of coffee powder on the top and call it coffee. Not that tea is much better,that's full of cardammom too. Why oh why do people put cardammom in everything!!!!

This as promised in the earlier post is the next of the Jaipur letters.

The Singhs - Man, Jai & Madho!

The erstwhile royal family of Jaipur must now be Rajasthan's biggest family business firm. What a racket they run!!!! Have it down to a fine art they do, this thing called the tourist trap. With well trained trappers too - felt like a poor chased mink or ermine, I did! Lure you in with stories about how the traditional block prints are done - "just for looking purpose, not for buying purpose, you just look madam, sir. So interesting you know, traditional just like how it was done in Sanganer, village very close to Jaipur..." and the next thing you know you're looking at a piece of cloth so beautiful you know you just haveto own it. My sis and I had this deal that if one of us fell in love with something too expensive the other one would get her away from temptation; otherwise, we'd have been bankrupt by the time we left. I thought the forts were so cooool and not just because it was raining when we visited them :-) But seriously, Amber Fort and the palace - I could have spent hours there. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that Man Singh was Akbar's ally but that it translated into this beautiful fusion of Mughal & Rajput architecture - that I had no idea. The pillars in his hall of audience - they're half Hindu motifs and the rest Mughal motifs and so beautifully blended together. Did you know that Man Singh had twelve wives? And had a network of secret passages that led from his quarters to theirs? The idea was that he could visit one wife without the rest knowing about it! Smart man, this Man Singh! And they had a whole section where all they did was play hide&seek. They wouldn't let us in to see that because the rock bees have built hives inside the rooms and if you get stung, you could die. One of Man Singh's descendants had two wives who had their quarters in the Amber Fort. If you please, their clothes and jewellery weighed so much that they had to be wheeled around the palace - well, you can't expect any fragile Rajputani to carry around more than 10 kilos of silks and gold and silver by herself, can you? And they had separate rooms for the summer, winter and "too much summer". And a private swimming pool. All that luxury but they were effectively prisoners,weren't they? All these rooms are built around a garden where the two queens were supposed to walk in the evenings, while the king sat on his terrace and watched them. I loved the palace but felt so sorry for the poor queens. They existed for the King's pleasure and that's it. I don't think they actually had any relevance as people, which is really sad for anyone. And then there's Man Singh the Second, the one who married Gayatri Devi who's so beautiful - even at 86, she's gorgeous. She must have been something out of this world when she was young. And let's not orget his father, Madho Singh, the giant - 7 ft tall and 4 ft wide!!!!! They have some clothes of his hanging up and it takes up half a wall! Not surprisingly, the guy popped it at 39. Madho Singh was this guy who drank only Gangajal. When hetravelled to England, he took along with him large silver vessels of Gangajal, each with about 900ltrs of water. Apparently Victoria Regina was offended at this but the guy got around her by explaining that in Rajasthan, one does not drink water from one's sister's house!! This, they tell me, is a practice that survives even today. Rajasthan - lovely place and all that, but I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with any of the customs they described.

There'll be more about Jai Singh later on, the one who founded Jaipur and my personal favourite out of the whole lot.

Smokin' Chicken and Choki Dhani

When you go to Jaipur, everyone who's already been to Jaipur tells you DON'T MISS CHOKI DHANI. And I mean everyone!!!! And so, we went to Choki Dhani. It's a nice place. You start off with a sapera or whatever they call a snake charmer, though I didn't see the saamp.Then you get a teeka and then you get to pay to get in!! Once you're in, there are the dancers and the dancers and oh yes, let me not forget the -you guessed it - the DANCERS! With multi-layered pots, pots of fire, plates, glasses, knives, forks & spoons ( well, not really:-), dancers in blue, green, black & red,dancers in every shape & size, everywhere you looked - dancers!!! And then we found the girl with the mehendi cone - yeah, joined the queue instantly and waited. Got a pretty bel done on my left hand, love mehendi on my hands, but it's years since I've had it done.Then of course, the oont ride & the haathi ride, no no, not me... but the kids, they enjoyed themselves so much. My sister's younger son was so happy after the camel ride that you couldn't get him to stop smiling even if you tried and none of us were about to anyway.We finally got to dinner and found to my brother-in-law's utter horror that one had to sit cross-legged on the floor. Not a problem for the rest of us, but he was so uncomfortable, it was all we could do to keep from laughing at him. And then while we were trying so hard to keep straight faces, he started reciting the list of muscles which were aching! The laughter lasted till I heard a thud in front of me and found a small triangular brick had landed on my plate. We were eating by the light of small earthen lanterns which was romantic and mysterious until that point - it suddenly struck me, the blinding reality - the lights were dim so we wouldn't see what we were eating.The brick was deep brown and well baked. It reminded me of the Laurie Baker houses you see in Kerala. Well, make your bed and lie in it or in this case buy your brick and eat it - so slathered it with white butter, peeled off the top layer and finished it. The curries started to arrive, each one more murky than the first and I looked at them and muttered that I didn't even know what I was eating. My nephew, the older one, looked at me and said "Ha! but I know what I'm eating. This is what we get in the mess Monday to Friday"! Poor boy, we go all the way to Rajasthan and take him out and feed him MESS FOOD. And about ten minutes earlier, he and I had been discussing the relative merits of barbecued chicken vs. smoked chicken and he was telling me about some place his friend had found where you got the most delectable smoked chicken! As we progressed to the fourth variety of half-cookedchapati, he turned to me with such a forlorn look and said 'Imagine,we could have been sitting on chairs and eating smoked chicken'. And to make matters worse, we got back to the Club where we were staying, to find out that they had a barbecue there every evening. It was so hilarious, we laughed almost through the night, imagine going on holiday and eating bajra ka roti as a special treat. Well, all experiences go together to make a holiday, I guess.

So dear ones, if you're going to Jaipur anytime in the future, go to Choki Dhani to see the dancers (they're pretty) and go to Choki Dhani because it's full of teenagers in short skirts on camels, but go tothe Handi resaurant (opp the GPO) for dinner! Order the Afghani Chicken, it's ..oh... it's... well... you just have to eat it! And the world's best Butter Chicken too! And don't forget the mutton simmered over a slow fire in a handi for hours, the aroma clings to you and the meat melts across your tongue when you put it into your mouth and you don't even know which part of you is tasting it.