Desert trip

I am just back on the first day of the year from another enchanting and perfect holiday trip. If God is watching from on high, I feel more and more like telling Him that I have a lot to be very thankful for.

On Monday, Christmas Eve, Firoz drove ma and me to Kolkata airport. The day started very cold and slightly foggy. The drive was smooth and swift, ending all too soon (these delights matter a great deal to someone who sits at home taking classes for months on end). The airport was horribly crowded – it could almost have been Howrah railway terminus at rush hour. Middle class India is moving around like nobody’s business: and it shows, from the noisiness to the craze for clicking selfies… how utterly rustic most people using hi-tech are! An expensive first-time snack on an Indigo flight, then into Pupu’s arms at Delhi T1, aka Palam airport in another age. Delhi was chilly. A short snooze followed by coffee and snacks, then we were off to Jodhpur via the Mandore Express. I had reserved a first-class coupe: seeing that it needs four to make a proper ensemble, and I have always had fewer or more with me before, this was for the first time in my life. It was an old coach, but quiet, very clean, plush and private, so the overnight trip was a gently-rocking dream.

There was no morning tea served on the train, but we arrived at the ‘Sun City’ early, so it didn’t really rankle. The hotel was nearby, beside the landmark clock tower, and it was superb, with a traditional haveli architecture/décor, very friendly, courteous and helpful staff, fine rooms offering a splendid view of the fort, and a sun-drenched, windswept rooftop garden-restaurant where I could spend the whole day lazing. We were allotted rooms directly after breakfast, then we went on a city tour, taking in the fabulous Umaid Bhavan Palace (though Pupu and I agreed that at the price it was hardly to our taste), the lush, ornate and very well-maintained Mandore gardens (Mandore being the original capital of the Jodhpur royals, and having mythical associations Ravana through his wife Mandodari) where some street musicians, both young and old, tugged at our heartstrings as they strummed on their traditional instrument the ravanahatta (like this); then the Jaswant Thada, home to the cenotaphs of kings without number, and finally the pièce de resistance, the grand and vast Mehrangarh Fort itself. The sights were a feast for the eyes, and my mother amazed us by climbing all those breathless inclines and steep, steep staircases without huffing and puffing, slowing to a crawl or complaining even under her breath. Look at the photos…

We returned to the hotel, lazed a bit, drank beer while Pupu sketched a fountain on the roof, looked appreciatively at the gorgeous lights as we watched musicians singing and dancing with joyful abandon, took a walk around the local market where Pupu found herself a full suit of traditional Rajasthani attire, tasted fafla chaat, downed a sumptuous dinner and turned in early, having admired the sight of the great fort all lit up for as long as it lasted.

At ten the next morning the package tour to Manvar the desert resort began. It was a fast two-hour drive along the Jodhpur-Jaisalmer highway, just short of the little town of Dechu, right on the edge of the desert – and yet the campus was so green that it stole our hearts at first sight. Within ten minutes we had all agreed that it was worth every penny they were charging. A camera-chase after an inquisitive yet bashful nilgai across dry grass and brambles, followed by a delicious and sinfully excessive buffet lunch, hours of lounging on the warm grass followed by a short ‘village walk’, then an evening spent languorously chatting before the heater with our feet snugly tucked inside thick blankets, listening to the dense dark silence of the scrub forest outside from within  a very swank room while the TV murmured away in the background, until it was time for a delicious candlelit dinner (there was too much of everything for us to do justice to) under a sky blazing with stars. What could follow but deep and restful sleep?

The next morning there was a jeep tour of the sand dunes, the high point of which was several hair-raising plunges down inclines you’d think too steep for anything on wheels to cope with. We stopped at a point where the desert stretched out as far as the eye could see: despite having seen pictures galore, the feeling was eerie. The clumps of wild cotton bushes caught our eye: apparently all kinds of animals crawl into them for very cosy shelter on cold nights. Also the fact that the wind was so cold and the sun so hot on our backs at the same time. The quietly chatty driver told me he drove tourists around in season and broke stones for the rest of the year – ‘We are of a very neechi caste,’ he confided, a Bhil, and was delighted when I put my arm around him and told him that despite being a brahmin I didn’t believe in such sweeping social tags, and that I knew by tradition Bhils were so terribly important that for 13 centuries no Rajput could ascend the throne of Mewar without a Bhil anointing his forehead with a tilak using his own blood.

After lunch another jeep ferried us to the last and best attraction of the trip – the camp in the desert. The sun was blazing, so we had a short nap in our luxurious tent until it grew cooler, then there was a nearly hour-long camel ride, timed perfectly to catch the sunset from atop a high dune. The camels could be called ‘cute’ in the teenage girlie sense, with names like Rattu and Senti and Babloo, liquid, gentle eyes and very mild manners notwithstanding the peculiar loud grumbling and burbling they absentmindedly kept up all through. I wish the female tourists (and a few young males too, God help me) didn’t shriek and scream so horridly and melodramatically every time the camels rose, swung and sat down. And it would be a nice idea if they built a platform for riders to hitch on and get off: much less harrowing for them as, I am sure, it would be for the beasts.

It was growing rapidly dark and cold, and the lights came on all around the open campus, electrical as well as flaming torches. Then there was a mesmerizing song and dance show by local performers (Pupu befriended one of them, not much older than she, who had already performed many times around the country and abroad), while we the visitors sat around in a vast circle on gaddis and reclining on bolsters, and liveried servants kept stoking the blazing bonfires and plying us with dainties, papad, nuts and sand-baked gram, tikka, pakora, soup and little chops, besides all kinds of drinks as though we were all kings of yore, until we thought that that would be all for dinner, but the real stuff was waiting for those who still had space in their tummies for it: I didn’t. Many eyes were on Pupu that night, she looked so good and natural in her local costume. By the time we went to sleep, the fan in the tent had been replaced by a heater, and they even gave us hot water bottles to tuck into our blankets and rezai in pukka old British style – truly the icing on a very good cake. We stood gazing at the vast blackness outside before turning in, knowing that there were deer all around, and it would have made my day if I had heard a leopard roar. Five hundred years ago, there really would have been lions for real aplenty.

This was my third Rajasthan trip over nearly a quarter century – I had kept the desert trip for the last – and I shall give that state the highest possible recommendation for tourists. It makes me proud that there are so many nice, quiet, good Indians to know. As I have often said, if I were a millionaire, I’d like to retire to a grand garden villa of my own on the outskirts of a city like Udaipur.

On the 28th, the resort gave us a fine breakfast, and then we were back in Jodhpur by midday. We checked into a just-okay hotel for the afternoon, retiring rooms at the station being unavailable, lunched and snoozed there (it was hot as long as the sun was high in the sky, in end-December!), and took the same Mandore Express back to Delhi at night, arriving at the capital at 6:40 in the morning – thank God for late trains, sometimes! Pupu’s 22nd birthday. Lazed through the day, sipping wine but skipping plans for a sumptuous lunch or dinner because all our systems were protesting against prolonged irregularity and overload, went strolling around the park in Sarvodaya Enclave in the afternoon and to SDA market in search of a cream cheesecake through the IIT campus, cold and desolate in the vacation, in the evening. Turned in early, because Pupu was going off on a solo trip to Mumbai the next morning to assert her adulthood. The temperature apparently dropped to 2⁰ celsius that night, and despite the thick quilts, my ageing bones felt the need for the heater…

The next day, after dropping Pupu off at the airport, we lazed till late, then spent a lovely afternoon sunning ourselves at Lodi Garden. I am truly in love with Delhi’s wealth of greenery now. Made a couple of videos that evening for my YouTube channel, and browsed through books. The 31st was spent on a tour around the city in one of the cars provided by our favourite agency of Singh-jis. Mehrauli – the Qutab Enclave – was good, and very well maintained by the ASI, though I was saddened to see that the famed rustless iron pillar had been fenced off, as I have lately seen so many historical landmarks being treated around the country – I guess a country of compulsive vandals deserves no better. Then the very interesting Garden of Five Senses, where they have even put up something as exotic as a Mayan gateway! And where we lunched on chhole-bhature. Purana Quila turned us off with its milling crowds, but Safdarjung’s tomb, the last bright spot of Mughal architecture before the darkness fell, was quiet and hospitable. A lovely drive along Chanakyapuri the diplomatic enclave – truly, that promenade can vie with the very best in the world – then we were back home, and it was time to pack up. Shilpi had played an excellent though sometimes over-anxious hostess for a whole week.

By 7:30 next morning we were at the airport, and by 12:20 Firoz had picked us up in Kolkata. Another lovely drive, stopping only for lunch at Hindusthan hotel near Gurap – try their vegetarian thaali sometime – and we were back home, safe, sound, tired but happy, by 3:30. Home always feels lovely after a long vacation. And it’s still not ended, because as at the time of writing, Pupu is sending me bulletins several times a day about how she’s enjoying her trip to Mumbai. She’ll be back at the campus today, and – another sign of inherited genes – she has discovered that she too, after a week or so of holidays, yearns to get back to work. Since yesterday, I have resumed classes, as so often in the past.

I love my India. Others can have their Malaysia and Umrica and Ewrope … as the poet said, may I die in the same light to which I first opened my eyes: oi alotei noyon rekhe mudbo noyon sheshey. May our India become the greatest nation on earth again.

For photos, click here.