Bikaner express train to the blue city

Indian lentil salesman. North Indians prefer bread while south Indians prefer rice, but as in Nepal, they are united in their love for lentils. Literally hundreds of varieties of lentils exist, and some form of bhat (curried lentils) is served each meal.

The general dearth of water in the desert makes a five day trek a sweaty dirty business to say the least, so we were very happy to get back to Bikaner and finally enjoy that piping hot bucket of water and that pristine sand-less, camel-crap-less Tandoori chicken we had been dreaming about during long bouts of camel induced crotch pounding. We selected a very clean and modern restaurant that looked something like what we might find in Western Europe, though the rat scurrying around the tables combined with the unconcerned looks on the waiters’ faces was a dead giveaway that we were still in Rajasthan.

Bikaner is a hopeful desert outpost town that is trying to get on the beaten tourist path, but hasn’t quite made it yet. In deference to their burgeoning tourist business, we spent several days trying to make sense of their attractions: a crumbling fort, a few dilapidated havelis, and a dubious dancing camel show, before we finally gave up and found ourselves staring at the bland concrete hulk of a large, mostly empty, junk-country shopping mall. We have come across several of these ghost malls in north India and each time find ourselves lost in thought, gazing at some poor visionary’s failed business enterprise: there is nothing more depressing than a poorly executed attempt at mimicking the western excess of a massive shopping complex.

Katlijn bought a salwar in Bikaner. In addition to being attractive and more comfortable, Indians genuinely appreciated her wearing the local clothing and we were subjected to significantly less staring.

In Singapore, they have malls so herculean they have the combined excess of ten ordinary malls into one massive shopping center of mythical proportions that assault the senses with entire districts full of flashing advertising screens, exhausting supplies of expensive consumer goods, and mammoth American-style food courts. It is as though they had begun by carefully studying the very essence of western culture and then decided to quite deliberately go about reproducing it by marshaling all their greatest engineers and artisans, gathering their wisest philosophers, and focusing their tremendous Eastern assiduity to the task of constructing stunningly sophisticated consumer meccas having more Starbucks per unit volume than anywhere else in the universe: a place more western than the west could ever be.

Indian attempts at reproducing this type of western consumer excess are, thankfully, abysmal failures. Wandering around places like Bikaner always brings to mind the same questions: where is all that IT money going to anyhow? Isn’t India supposed to be running the planet in a few decades ? And when they do, will there still be errant cows wandering the streets? God, I hope so.

In Delhi, they tried to get rid of the cows. Several years ago, the nation realized that Western cities don’t have street cows, decided they were an embarrassment to the New India’s modern image, and embarked on an ambitious multi-million dollar program to rid “smelly” Delhi of its wonderfully robust bovines. What about holy cows and holy rats !? Such a shameless rebuke of centuries of Hindu heritage ! Fortunately, the government failed utterly at the task having under-estimated the monumental scale of the problem. Despite persistent effort, cows are still regularly seen obstructing traffic, strutting rebelliously down busy Delhi traffic arteries in defiance of Indian persecution. And I sincerely hope that when India’s IT money finally beats a path to Bikaner’s swirling desert outpost to transform the sad, dusty concrete shopping complex we were staring at into a bustling modern commercial metropolis, the cows will still be there meandering serenely down the crowded ultra-modern neon-lit shopping halls of a unique Indian creation- not another western strip mall clone, but something the world has never seen before: a modern city that actually looks original, a New India with its very own futuristic vision of next-generation rickshaws, touts, and food wallahs.

Katlijn, wrapped in a hand-stitched pashmina shawl, enjoying our favorite breakfast combination in India: a Saffron flavoured lassi and Muesli with curd.

With this optimistic vision in my mind, we proceeded to Bikaner's crusty train station and waited several hours for our train to arrive. When asked where the train was, the station master told us it would arrive "in time" which is as close to "on time" as you get in North India and is a good indication your train will come sometime before dark. The train broke down on us again somewhere in the middle of the desert and we tried to pass the time reading our books over the general raucous accumulating around us.

Interestingly, if you are the only person on an empty bus or train in India, Indian passengers will come and sit right beside you instead of selecting one of the many empty seats. This is especially true if you are quietly reading a book which, in my experience, results in a large crowd of men invading my personal space and breathing down my back while they read carefully over my shoulder. According to several sources we have asked, many Indians simply do not understand why someone would sit by themselves and read a book- it is just not done here. Apparantly, we look very lonely and either they want to keep us company by engaging us in conversation ("Canada !? Beautiful country. My sister....") , or they are so intensely interested in what could possibly keep us occupied that they want to grab our books from our hands and rifle through them. Trying to read the Lonely Planet Guide to India is particularly challenging as surrounding passengers want nothing more than to pass the book around the train taking turns looking things up. Our i-pod is another object of immense fascination and complete strangers see absolutely no problem with borrowing our earphones for the duration of our trip while occasionally demanding that we change the song for them. After a few weeks in India, it occurs to us that we have completely lost our privacy. Our business and our belongings have now become public property.

An Indian bangle maker and salesman. Bangles are worn by most Indian women, especially during pregnancy when their rustling sound can be heard and later recognized by the baby.

Another Indian train peculiarity is the male Indian cross-dressers that go up and down the hallway generally annoying the passengers and asking for money. Whenever one walks into our train car, every nearby man, woman, and child gets up to stare at us. To the general annoyance of the transvestite beggars, a man wearing a bra and pantyhose is completely uninteresting compared to a white tourist's reaction to the situation- especially if they react by sticking their noses deeply into a massive Indian guide book desperately trying to pretend the text is so absorbing they don't even notice the fake bosoms heaving above them or the growing circus of spectators.

Faced with these experiences, we were glad to finally arrive in Jodhpur, Rajasthan's "Blue City". We tugged our junk-country earphones out of a pair of hairy ears, wrested control of our thick guidebook, and hoisted our bulging backpacks off the train. It wasn't long before we found a nice family-run guesthouse with a gorgeous rooftop view of Jodhpur's looming cliff-side fortress.

Glorious Meherangarh fort reigning over the blue city.

Mughal influenced architecture inside one of the fort's many palaces. These windows are specially designed so that women can surreptitiously peer down on the courtyard, while the men below are not able to see up through the windows at the women.

Tragic tiny hand prints of all the Maharaja's widows who performed sati (ritual self-immolation) when their husband died in 1843. Obviously, this Indian tradition is now forbidden by law though a very small number of incidents still occur each year in remote isolated villages.

View of Jodhpur from the ramparts. Jodhpur is called the "blue city" due to the indigo hue of the rambling buildings that make up the old city. This colour represents the Brahmin caste which constitutes most of the city's population.

We met up with a nice couple, Doug and Lee, both retired teachers from Berkeley, California, who are on their own six month world trip. In the evening, they shared dinner with us as well as interesting experiences including living abroad (Malaysia and Africa), travelling, and teaching Steve Jobs' children in California. They also kept us company while we explored the impressive forts, cenotaphs, and markets in what was our favourite of Rajasthan's colourful desert cities.

Doug and Lee convincing Andrew that working for Apple might not be such a great idea.

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Milky white marble memorials and cenotaphs to Jodhpur's past Maharajas near Fort Meherangarh.

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Rajasthan is considered a living study in ethno-musicology. The harsh desert climate contrasts dramatically with a sophisticated culture of music, dance, and dazzling clothing often having symbolic significance. The happy pink-and-gold combination seen here may only be worn by a woman who has borne a son.