Rajasthan again, February 2022

[You can find photos here. Click on each photo for some description]

From takeoff to touchdown, the flight from Delhi to Udaipur takes barely an hour. So unless you absolutely love train journeys - which I most definitely do not any more since the smoking ban came into effect, and given that the fares are now close if you book early, the question of travelling for twelve hours or more by rail simply does not arise.

The Uber driver was an idiot who didn't know his way about, so we took longer than necessary to reach this outside-of-town resort - Titardi Castle, owned and run by a young scion of the  Shivrati branch of the royal family of Mewar. It's tiny by castle standards, and quite unprepossessing from the outside; basically a homestay with only two rooms to let out to guests. But our room was lovely, and offered a panoramic view of the hills. When we arrived it was a little after five p.m., with the sun still blazing, and a brisk breeze sweeping in through the windows. The evening was spent lazing, chatting, nosing around (the magnificent dining cum drawing room has everything you associate with royalty, from a great chandelier to monogrammed napkins at the table, portraits of a long line of Maharanas on the walls and the current prince playing polo, numerous hunting and sports trophies, a fine drinks cabinet and a framed wedding invitation from Buckingham Palace). Much time was given to browsing through a big picture book on the history of Rajasthan that had been thoughtfully placed in our room. Shiv-ji, the all purpose factotum who does just about everything for his 'Sir', from driving to milking the cow, and has been around for 22 years, rustled up a lip-smacking dinner for us - brought Sudhirda poignantly back to mind. Aided by a beer, we gently nodded off, comforting ourselves with the thought that Bheblu was safely and happily tucked in at her new and secure boarding house back in Delhi. Udaipur was warm, so though we pulled rugs over us, the fan overhead was going full speed.

We went sightseeing around town in an autorickshaw next morning. I was doing Udaipur for the third time, and Pupu her second, so we limited the trip to just two main sites: the City Palace and Saheliyon ki Bari. The palace tour took us three hours, because we stopped and drank in a lot of the details, including the museum, the crystal gallery and the Durbar Hall (this trip is expensive). Parts of the Palace property have been turned into three five-star hotels now, including the iconic Lake Palace of Jahangir and James Bond fame. Saheliyon ki Bari with its lush greens and flowers and fountains never ceases to fascinate me, especially  because I have honeymoon memories (the marble throne in the garden on which I sat with my new wife back in 1995 has been fenced off to protect it from vandals - read typical Indian tourists), so we luxuriated in the sun for a bit, enjoying the sheer bliss of doing nothing and being completely at peace in companionable silence. Local snacks at the stalls beside the grand Fateh Sagar Lake, followed by a quick visit to a handicrafts emporium (Pupu knows just how to handle them, while I hang on to my purse for dear life), and we were done for the day. It is always delightful to retire to a good hotel at the end of a satisfactorily tiring day. Chat-bath-chat-dinner-sleep.

The young Maharaja - also an army major - saw us off in the morning. A hired car took us first to Kumbhalgarh (longest wall in India, built by Rana Kumbha, the place where Maharana Pratap was born). Two hours to walk up and down. Not the finest place to visit in Rajasthan, but I wanted it to be part of my memory book. Then off to Mount Abu. The Udaipur-Abu road was a dream even 26 years ago, when we could only sigh and long for such highways in Bengal, and it still is. The sun was blazing there too, but the wind was much cooler. A longish walk up the hills, a jaunt through the busy marketplace where Pupu bought some trinkets dirt cheap, and the highlights were getting a handmade wooden door nameplate and Marwari rabri icecream. The hotel was homely, but offered a huge terrace overlooking the lake. Kept reminding me of Hotel Evelyn in Nainital, May 2007, when we watched a rainstorm across the lake.

Post breakfast next morning, we drove off to the biggest highlight of Mt. Abu, the Dilwara Jain temples built more than a thousand years ago. The five shrines, but especially the Vimala Vasahi temple and the Neminath temple, are (though severely plain on the outside) absolutely breathtaking for their intensively carved exquisite marble sculptures within, every square inch of pillar and wall and ceiling. I wonder what Michelangelo would have thought if he had seen them, and also how sahibs who had encountered Kalidasa and Kautilya and Aryabhatta and seen things like this and the Taj could have declared that India had had no culture, no civilization... another wonderful thing is how closely the standard template of tirthankara idols resemble that of the Buddha. And finally what Richard Dawkins the fool would have said if he had come here to witness a thriving religion that has no church and expressly denies the existence of God! We walked back downhill to Nakki Lake, and had a most pleasant paddle boat ride. Then, having worked up a good appetite, we lunched on chicken korma and naan at Naaz Hotel just beside the mosque: as in Hardwar, we had been getting a little bored with strictly vegetarian cuisine. Then, believe it or not (some may consider this a great waste of holiday time) we had a very long siesta. As evening was setting in, we walked the whole way around the lake, which was beginning to twinkle with lights: it is good to see that the municipality takes pains to keep the environs litter free, and the parikrama has been kept free of traffic. An interesting sidelight is that you can hire two wheelers, chiefly Honda Activa-s, at hourly rates here for sightseeing. The last time I tried that was in Pokhra, Nepal, back in 1994. That night I gave dinner a miss, which I sometimes do these days to give my poor insides a rest, reminding myself that I am not growing any younger. 

We were back in Udaipur at around 1 p.m. on Tuesday. The driver, Indrakumar ji, was elderly, but superb at the wheel. Told me he had been at it for 28 years, and had been driving since the era of the old Ambassador - 'no car like that these days'! This time it was truly in the lap of luxury at Hotel Mahendra Prakash, very close to the City Palace. Quick lunch on biryani, then another restful siesta. Went walking in the evening to visit the rooftop restaurant at Hotel Baba Palace, where we had spent a very happy sojourn back in 2005. Got magnificent views of the Palace (just as the light and sound show was beginning) and the 17th century Jagdish (Jagannath) temple right opposite at sundown. I don't believe much in miracles, but we walked up the stairs to witness the last strains of the puja moments before the curtain was drawn across the face of the deity for the night. It was as if I had been summoned for a darshan, exactly as it had happened the last time I had been in Puri, and the way I had inadvertently visited all four 'Naths' together at Ukhimath in February 2018. Anyway...

Dinner was just curds again. Next morning, SpiceJet told us that our flight had been postponed to 5 p.m. from 1:40. The gracious hotel owner said we were welcome to stay hours beyond the checkout time, so we packed lazily, Pupu got some work done, bath and a sumptuous lunch - best daal I have tasted in years - then we finally pushed off for Maharana Pratap airport, far outside the city. A leisurely wait, and we were back home in Delhi a little before 8 o'clock. 

This was a barebones narrative. The fun lies in the quirky details. Let me list a few.

To start with, from Delhi to Udaipur it was my first flight by Air India after it returned to the Tata fold, but other than a recorded welcome message from Ratan Tata, there has been no change yet: even the plastic panels overhead still bear the trademark stains! Incidentally, all the stewardesses, whether in Air India or other airlines, somehow seem to look more cute with their paper thin 'PPE suits' on.

Half the old city of Udaipur is a dug up mess, because work has been going on over the last two years at a snail's pace to turn it into a smart city, whatever that means. However, all hoteliers, transporters and shopkeepers assured me that it would look spick and span in at most a year's time.

Travelling around with Pupu is so much fun because we share so many tastes, so many interests, so many likes and dislikes. We even keep sniggering at people around us for the same reasons - the way they mangle English, the way they try so hard to look 'cool', how thin and small the average Rajput youth looks: we agreed that since they have acquired a reputation for being ferocious warriors over millenia, something in their blood must overcompensate for their lack of physical advantages (comparing with, say, Sikhs and Pathans). So we never lacked for things to talk about in their entire course of the trip. This time, and for the first time, though, Pupu was frequently at work with laptop and phone, and I couldn't make up my mind whether to be happy or proud or sad, so I remained simply bemused...

At Udaipur the first evening, we were almost kidnapped by an autorickshaw driver who was playing music at earth shattering volume (he had probably lost his hearing years ago) and took us several kilometres in the direction exactly opposite the way we wanted to go before we discovered the mistake and got off hurriedly. The man was unrepentant, and refused even to acknowledge that we had asked him several times to take us to the City Palace before boarding: from the looks of him, I wouldn't  be surprised if he had never even heard of it, though how a man can live in a city and not know its most famous landmark is more than I can figure out.

Rajasthan is well known for swarms of foreign tourists, and Bengalis are of course everywhere, but this time I missed both types, whether because international travel has still barely resumed or because there are school exams going on countrywide, I couldn't tell you.

Walking along Nakki Lake in Mount Abu the second evening, we were accosted by an elderly gentleman in cloth cap and checked blazer who spoke Bengali with a strong western-Indian accent, and said he had lived more than half his life at Abu, with his in-laws' house located at Darjeeling. Pupu said later he looked and sounded like a character straight out of a Satyajit Ray story, and then I regretted not engaging him for a while longer.

At the second hotel in Udaipur, we had a good time feeding Tom the fifty year old tortoise tomatoes (the owner said they had discovered it was a she years after adopting her, and by that time the name had stuck. Brought back memories of Quasimodo the pigeon in Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals). Apparently guests sunbathing beside the pool have to be warned not to wear red bikinis if they don't want to be nibbled by Tom, who identifies anything bright red with tomatoes!

They do the very short trip by air from Udaipur to Jaipur with one of those small propeller driven aeroplanes which I have never flown. I hope I get a chance to do it someday. Rajasthan is one place, along with Himachal and Devbhoomi, which I would like to keep returning to.