| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 07 February 2005 |
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So far nothing has bothered us to eat (knock wood!), so
we got sufficient to keep us going for about Rs5.50. That included pakora,
a dish with chapatis, and a bun of some sort. Enough dinner for two people
for under eighteen cents.
Some travelers also ate and left some food on the ground. These were
six dogs and a calf who wanted the food, but one dog barked and chased off
anyone else who approached. Through instinctive behavior the calf put down
his head to butt the dog even though he was still too young to have horns.
Unfortunately, the greedy dog won out. The calf could probably have
made mincemeat of the dog, horns or not, but the dog was sneaky and bluffed.
And he did scare off the competition.
Mark writes, I tried reading some of FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT, but there is
really not much light at this end of the car. The designers put little
reading lights at this end of the car. Each is a metal box you open and the
light comes on. On one of the trains there was one that worked. All the
others have been corroded shut. The Northern Railway provides
transportation. Maintaining light falls more under the category of customer
service, which is bad for profits. If they start by maintaining the lights,
someone will want them to oil the fans and where will it all end? They'd
have to fix the peeling ceiling, the paint, and the spit stains on the
floor.
He continues, In Japan, you see a lot of sweating all the little
details. In India you see a lot of 'do only the absolutely necessary.' The
United States is in between. It is ironic that with labor so cheap in India
so much breaks down for lack of maintenance. But the Northern Railway
pretty much has a monopoly. And there is much competition. People like
Moona don't try to be better, they try to be sneakier and more vicious. Not
unlike the dog in the railway station.
Evelyn notes that one thing the Lonely Planet guide seems to be missing
is the Sanskrit for the towns. This would be helpful when pulling into
railway stations (as well as other times) since this is usually more
prominent than the Roman alphabet name.
Well, friends, we got another gotcha. We got off the train and
immediately an auto-rickshaw driver latched on to us and would not let go.
We tried to call the Sai Niwas Hotel, but the phone kept disconnecting. (We
think this is because the phone required a Rs1 coin even though it said 50
paise, but who knows?) We told the driver to take us to the Sai Niwas. He
kept saying that the rooms were small and he could recommend a better place.
We insisted on the Sai Niwas. He stopped at the end of a narrow street and
said, Down here. We went down the street. He followed. We got to a sign
that said Sai Niwas in front of a building at the end of the street. The
driver led us to the door. We rang the bell. We got there and the room
really did look tiny and wretched, but we could put up with it. The one
major irritation was that the bath was shared. Also, it seemed to have to
roaches. The book had said that it had attached baths and Anne had said it
was spotless. The room was Rs150. Now, the book had it in the Rs450 range.
We were not sure what was going on, but it was late and the room was cheap.
The owner said we should look at the roof and it did have a nice view. We
each had a drink. While we did, the owner and the auto-rickshaw driver had
an argument in Hindi, no doubt over how much commission the former should
pay the latter. The owner came back and said to register the next morning.
We went back to the room, really just a tiny house bedroom with a closet and
saw a sheet of paper that said Hotel Shivas. The auto-rickshaw driver
brought us to the wrong hotel. And we bought it. This one is listed in the
Lonely Planet guide as Rs60 to Rs90. Swindled again. Mark says that every
time he starts warming up to India, we hit more gotchas. Mark writes, We
should probably be more careful but, dammit, we just cannot see every damn
thing this country throws at us. Even if we did it would be just too
exhausting to fight the battle every inch along the way.
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Winston Churchill said of Calcutta: I shall always
be glad to have seen it--namely, that it will be unnecessary for me ever to
see it again. (Churchill actually had a lot of negative attitudes about
India and Indians.) Sometimes we feel that way too.
Evelyn's left ankle is the size of Bayonne, New Jersey, and about as
attractive--though it does have some very interesting colors and shading.
And how did this happen?
We had a very bad night of sleep with a lot of noise in our extremely
tacky room. At about 7 AM we packed up and left. Nobody was up so we could
not check out. Walking down the dark narrow stairway, Mark trod on a step
that was only half there. Because the steps were turning a corner, one step
had a triangular top surface. Mark's foot fell six inches and he landed on
his heel. No harm done, but he was surprised. He told Evelyn to be careful
not to do the same thing. She didn't. She twisted her ankle. Between the
dim light, the suitcase blocking her view, and the slowness of her brain at
this hour, Mark's warning hadn't registered in time. Instead of just
stepping six inches below where she expected, she missed the last three or
four steps entirely.
Evelyn sat there a few minutes, then found she could limp on it. We
hobbled out (well, Mark walked and Evelyn hobbled--and it's a good thing we
travel light, because Mark had to carry all the luggage while Evelyn leaned
against the walls for support) and found the Sai Niwas just next door. The
sign in front of the Shiva which said Sai Niwas also had an arrow pointing
in that direction, but in the dark last night we hadn't seen it. (And by
the next day, someone had stuck an election poster over it.) It is a very
nice-looking hotel with a view of the lake and the water palaces. Mark
looked at three rooms and chose the most expensive, Rs475 a night (about
US$15.32). The man who runs it was in no hurry to have us register. He
said we could just rest up in the room and shower up. The day is gray and
cool, a combination of depressing and a relief from the heat. Mark wrapped
Evelyn's ankle with an Ace bandage. It looked like she had done a real
number on herself. We had breakfast, a sort of Indian Wheatena that was
good. Mark was dreading having to go check out of the Shiva but the
manager, after a quick flash of disappointment, accepted that we would not
stay with him three nights and smiled.
Mark returned to the new hotel and Evelyn. We checked in and went to
our room. Mark left Evelyn to rest her ankle and went to walk up and down
the streets and buy mineral water. Mark writes, If this were the first
city I had visited in India, I would judge the people to be very pushy to
try and get me to buy. Actually, this and Khajurao are the two softest-sell
cities we have been to. I can walk down long stretches of their market
streets with only minor attempts to pull me into tourist shops. I talk for
ten minutes to a boy who'd like me to see his art school, but when I say I
am not interested, he does not lose interest in finding out about me and
what I do.
When we told the manager of the Sai Niwas that we were thinking of
taking the city tour the next morning, he told us to save our money.
Everything in the city tour is within three or four blocks of the Sai Niwas.
Why go all the way to the Tourist Bungalow only to be brought back here?
Our guide books and walking will give us a better city tour for free. He
gave us a nice map of the area, and what he says is true.
People tell us that Jaiselmer is the prettiest city, yet the view out
our hotel window--with the lake, the palaces on the far side, and the hills
in the distance--is actually more peaceful and beautiful than any view in
Jaiselmer. If Evelyn's foot were better, things would be perfect. As it
is, at least she has a beautiful view visible to her while she lies in bed
with her foot propped up.
Mark returns to the room and finds there is a power failure that has
been going on for fifteen minutes. It is an hour later and still the power
is out.
Yesterday while Mark was writing in his log, Evelyn was reading the two
books she had bought. He got caught up in his log. Now he wanted to read
from FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT (about India's and Pakistan's independence from
Britain). So did Evelyn. Mark says, I am a little surprised at how well-
written the book really is. I wish my writing could approach the insight of
this book. Reading about the history of India has been of some interest,
but not as good as what I have read of this book. I almost feel I could
learn most about India by staying in my room and reading.
Mark relates, Evelyn is trying to do some walking so we can go on an
afternoon tour, but she still looks like a fugitive from a Mummy movie. My
legs are a little stiff from Moria.
We grabbed an auto-rickshaw to the Tourist Bungalow for the tour.
After getting some sleep on the train and being keyed up from the auto-
rickshaw driver, Mark was up most of the night. Now it was catching up with
him. He is jet-lagged from a ten-minute auto-rickshaw ride.
At 2 PM our tour started. They gave us a place by the door of the bus
so that Evelyn would be by the door. The tour started with a seventy-minute
ride into the country to the site of the battle of Haldighati. This battle
was fought on June 21, 1576 (a Thursday). It was a battle in a religious
war. Akbar, the conqueror of India, was trying to wipe out Hinduism.
However, Udaipur was first chosen as a site of Hindu worship because it was
so remote. You cannot wipe out what you cannot reach. However, Man Singh
did reach Udaipur and in the name of the Mongol Emperor Akbar brought a much
superior army to Haldighati to wipe out the army of the Hindus, led by
Rajput Rana Pratap.
Actually, it is probably an oversimplification to make this a battle of
Hindus versus Muslims. It is really the battle of the Muslim Akbar's
followers, many of whom were Hindu, versus the sympathizers with the Hindu
Rajputs, many of whom were Muslim.
You go into a twenty-foot (six-meter) square room and there is a relief
map of the field of battle. The guide explains what you are seeing and how
the battle proceeded. The way the guide tells it, the battle was a stand-
off, but the guidebooks say Pratap really lost. But he'd held off Man
Singh. Pratap kept the royal umbrella over his head and this made him all
too easy a target. Three times Pratap had to be rescued. Finally Pratap
had to be carried off the field by his horse Chetak. Legend said that
Chetak had a leg cut off by a sword held in an elephant's trunk (and
elephants were indeed trained to wield swords), but still managed to carry
his master to safety. Chetak is remembered as the real hero of the battle
of Haldighati. (Haldighati means yellow steps or, more accurately,
tumeric steps, for the color of the soil.) One of the books mentions that
Chetak is the only horse to have a traffic circle named after him, and the
train between Delhi and Udaipur is the Chetak Express.
Actually, it is not clear that the Rajputs would have had to give up
their religion had Akbar's forces won. Akbar had respect for all religions.
As you may remember from earlier parts of this log, he had a Hindu wife and
raised her kin to high positions. He also tryed to create a polyglot
religion of all the religions he found, but that was later. Actually, all
there is that remains to be seen at Haldighati is a small memorial to
Chetak. Part of the battlefield is a playing field and another part has
houses on it. |
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