Jaipur: The Amber Fort

12/31/12

Hindi lessons started bright and early for Alex and I with our teacher Virendra Ji. The hotel that we are staying in was a colonial era palace, and our classroom for the week was the courtyard hall. It is quite a place to learn. For four hours the three of us sat and learned our first set of Hindi words. I feel okay about it, and our teacher said that we did Bahut Acchaa (very good).

After our lessons Alex and I went off on our own for the first time. We decided to go to a 15^th to 17^th century fort just outside the city. In order to get to the Amber Fort we took an auto-rickshaw, which is almost like a golf cart, but one that drives everywhere that cars do. Then again, so do tractors and bicycles rickshaws. Alex managed to get the driver to lower his price by 100 rupees, and away we went.

It was my first time on an auto-rickshaw, and because they are tiny have no doors, I was really able to get a feel for the streets. It was colorful, smelly, and above all else, loud. Brightly colored trucks have signs on the back that say “please honk” because it is the only way that they know other vehicles are around. The honking and yelling does not stop as road users of all varieties jockey for best position to make a little headway in all of the traffic.

I mentioned in an earlier post that nobody follows traffic laws, but somehow it works. Today this was taken to a new extreme when our rickshaw driver got mad at the bus in front of us and when on the other side of a raised lane barrier, driving into oncoming traffic with no way out for about half a block. I know that I should have been, but I was not scared; merely surprised, for I felt completely safe. The reason that we were able to get away with this is because nobody expects anybody to follow any rules, and so everybody pays attention at all times. In a way it may be safer than the order of America, where drivers can be complacent, thinking everyone else will do the expected, so they do not prepare for the unexpected. In India, nothing is unexpected in the middle of road, except a small, pale, redhead.  Of all crazy things going on, it is only my presence that makes the street stop and stare.

Alex and the stairs up to the fort

As we leave Jaipur city limits we come to a mountainside with stairs going all the way up to what is Amber fort and the nearby ancient military base. It is amazing. When we get to the bottom of the stairs our driver lets us out and goes to park where he will wait for us to return so he can take us back to the hotel. (The whole thing there and back costs us $6). We take the 15 min climb up to the fort, and which each step the view gets more and more breathtaking, Entering the first of four courtyards we see magnificence that America can only dream about. We take a quick look into the temple of the Hindu goddess Shilla, which was filled with praying Hindus. We just watched, and for the first time since we were in India, no one seemed to care that some white girls were there. They had bigger things on their minds. Don’t worry though, this moment of invisibility ended as soon as we left the temple and went up to the next court yard, which had the most beautiful gardens.

Amber Fort from the road

For the next two hours Alex and I had an amazing time wondering around the fort, getting ourselves lost in its dark passageways, only to find ourselves in compartments we hadn’t known existed, with views that shouldn’t be missed. Every time we turned around we faced either a mountainside view of naturally breathtaking beauty, or proof of the genius creativity and engineering of the Indian people. The frescos that covered the more important parts of the fort were stunning, both religious and secular, and the architecture was so smart that there was a passage way where the maharaja could visit anyone of his wives or concubines without the others knowing. That is called polygamy done right, when the sole goal is to bear a son.

Exhausted from a long day we headed back to our hotel for a rest and dinner. We finished off our New Years Eve going over our Hindi vocab, and I will be in bed before midnight. Blame it on the jet lag.

Things seem in the street today: 

• Cars, trucks, buses
• rickshaws, both auto and bicycle
• tractors
• people 
• pig, goats, dogs, cows, bulls, more dogs, even more people, donkeys, elephants, camels
• Trash
• gay couple 
• babies on motorcycles
• Not really elephants on the street (tourist attraction at the fort. notice the painted truck and lack of tusks)
• the Indian Tuxedo. 

Happy New Year!

Days 1 and 2: Delhi and Jaipur

Day 1, Delhi:

7:45am

I have been in India for a little under 24 hours now. In classic Indian style my new friend, Alex, and I were met at the airport not by the director of the program as we were expecting, but by some random Punjabi man who spoke no English. However, he was very friendly and got us safely to our first hotel, the YWCA in Delhi. We fly all the way across the world and end up at a YWCA filled with Christmas Trees and Santa Claus.

Lobby at the YWCA, New Delhi

While in the car the driver got a phone call from the assistant of the program telling us that the program director was running late and would be there in three hours. We were to check in and order dinner.  Not knowing what else to do, we followed the directions and then Alex and I hung out in our room for a while.  We even successfully ordered food, even though we had no idea what we were eating. 7pm came and went and no word from the director. By 9pm we had been awake for over 24 hours and could not keep waiting so we went to bed without ever hearing from Vidiya.

Both of us were awake at 7:30 the next day and we decided to shower after we waited the required 30 minutes for the water to heat up. Alex is about to get in the shower when Vidiya finally calls, only 12 hours after we were expecting her. And so I begin my first full day in India.

9:00 PM

Humayun's Tomb

It has been a crazy day in Delhi. We met the director of the program at breakfast, an adorable woman from South India named Vidiya Ji. It turns out she was late because the train from Varanasi to Delhi that was supposed to take 11 hours took 35. Welcome to India. Vidiya Ji will spend the next ten days with just Alex and me. She is an incredible woman with more connections than should be allowed. After breakfast we got back into the car, with the same driver as the day before. He was wearing the same sweater as well. We started at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) where we met the people who basically organize and sponsor all students and scholars who come to India. They were incredibly welcoming and seemed genuinely excited that we were there.

We then went to Humayun’s Tomb, one of the major attractions to Delhi. It was so vast, that I thought the front gate was the entire structure until we walked though it and saw grounds that covered 30 acres and a structure that was 3 of them. The structure was red and white stone; a 13^th  century creation of the Moughol empire, and was at the time used not only as a tomb but also as a military fort and the location of government. The Muslims who built it made it a tomb because their positional enemies, the Hindus, would not mess with a house of the dead. Good call Muslims.

Close up of a restored arch in Humayun's Tomb

After walking around for an hour or so we went back to the car. It took us a while to find our driver, but when we did he was wearing a different sweater. The old sweater was nowhere to be seen. We then headed to the Indian equivalent of Fridays where I had the biggest Masala Dosa on the planet.  Alex managed to finish her whole meal, but I was not as successful. Garbage plates aint got nothing on this stuff.

Next came our Health Orientation at the Fulbright house with Dr. Gita, one of the most beautiful women I have every met. Tall and slender with lovely grey hair, her teal sari and  navy bindi looked amazing. She was also incredibly funny and poetic, managing to incorporate The Little Prince into our lesson about Malaria. She also gave us a power point on breast cancer and cervical cancer just because she thought that we should know about them. After her presentation she told us about the place she spent her childhood, painting an idyllic picture of the Indian hill sides filled with flowers, monkeys, temples and grandmothers.

My First Masla Dosa  and Sambar. Yes, it was as big as it looks

After Dr. Gita we had some time to kill so we went to the Indian equivalent of Old Orchard or Eastview Mall, a place where upper class women hang out. Alex and I were too overwhelmed to buy anything, but we had fun looking at all of the beautiful and soft clothes. Vidiya Ji acted like the mother that she is, reminding us how expensive the stuff was, and how we could get the same items for much cheaper elsewhere.

Vidia Ji, Program Director,  at Lunch

The reason that we went to the particular shopping mall is because it was not close to the center of the city, and fairly closed off to the general public. This was important because there were fear of massive riots in the streets today due to the death of a girl who had been brutally raped in Delhi a few days ago. There were roadblocks all over, and more police than I have ever seem in my life. That being said, I saw no riots at all. The city was relatively normal for a Saturday night.

 Things I noticed today and other random musings:

•     Everybody speaks English, and all of the signs are in English because English is the only way that Indians from different states can talk to each other. It is the great unifier between foreigners of every nationality, Punjabi speakers, Hindi speakers, those who speak Tamil, Urdu, ect.
•  SOOO many American companies and SOOO many motorcycles
•   McDonalds (no beef), Pizza Hut (delivery man drove a motorcycle)
•  Traffic Rules are irrelevant and things are run by honking. If there are three lane markers, there are five lanes. You go however fast you can, wherever you can, whenever you can. There were times when we were even driving towards oncoming traffic. No tickets were written, but somehow no one crashed.
•  There are people EVERYWHERE. More then I have ever seen in my life. People were doing their laundry in the middle of an intersection, and a man was comfortable peeing by the side of the road. But, there were not that many women. Some, but few. And everybody seemed to have the knees to squat all of the time.
•  Everyone wears scarves in everyway possible.
• I am of normal height. That means people are short.
•  I have eaten Chutney and Kofta in the same day. Go team Eugene!