Udaipur, Mumbai

Long time, no see as we have been very preoccupied. We drove, again over bumpy roads, from Jodhpur to Udaipur - another Maharajah town. Its principal feature is a number of lakes, one with a palace in the middle of the largest. We were supposed to stay at that, but a member of the local princely family was getting married, so it was closed. The hotel we did stay at was also all "go" for the wedding, and though it was well-appointed, we felt rather ignored. The town is pretty, with lakeside features, but worth visiting only if you happen to be in the area. Our next move was by air to Mumbai, which is definitely worth it. Of course, our apprehension was teeming crowds and traffic jams, but that can be avoided by skillful manoeuvring, and we ended up at a marvellous, height of luxury hotel overlooking the sea. We did see glimpses of dreadful slums, but they are not everywhere, and we never saw a train with passengers on the roof. To the conventional tourist, Mumbai's principal attraction is the former English section, which is full of splendid Victorian, stately, neo-gothic buildings. We saw the Gateway to |India built by Lord Curzon for the visit of George V and Mary to the Delhi Durbar in 1911. We also saw the main railway station (from the outside) - another High Victorian construction. Beyond that there were a number of other such buildings - the Law Courts (still in use today as such), with other British Government offices now converted into university premises. Around that quarter there are a number of Victorian mansions, largely unchanged, housing Jain families. These, along with the Parsees, form the commercial and professional elite of Mumbai, and live extremely, though not ostentatiously, well. There are public parks galore, all a British legacy, and they are well-policed so that they do not fill up with squatters. We were not taken to see the poor quarters of Mumbai, and had no real interest in viewing them - as in Rio, where we did not join guided tours of the favelas.
Ultimately we had to move on however and, as the Egypt sector had had to be cancelled, we chose (on recommendation) the Sutlanate of Muscat & Oman as a place to relax for a few days. We stayed in a glorious resort hotel and did virtually nothing of note, as it is all mountainous desert except for areas contrived for residential and commercial purposes. It made an astounding contrast to India, as it is all new, super-clean, and sparsely populated. It is not a tourist spot, except for the fact that the weather is glorious at this time of the year, and ideal for relaxing around a pool. There is a souk, which Koji visited on his own as something to break the monotony, and he found it interesting. He reports that the vendors were not aggressive, and that it was not a mob-scene. But it amounted to the usual aggregation of jewellery, carpet and food outlets, and I had no regrets about giving it a miss.
From Muscat we flew through Zurich to Bucharest. We chose it because it was the one of the major Eastern European cities we had not visited, and I had heard that it had good examples of Belle Epoque architecture. As it turned out it does, never having been bombed, and we were charmed by it. It was much smarter than we had expected, and we were not bothered by gypsies, fraud artists or beggars. We went on a city tour, and were charmed by the baroque magnificence of the former Royal Palace (now occupied in part by the President), and the National Art Museum. The latter has two major collections. One is a gallery of traditional Old Masters, collected by King Carol I (formerly Prinz Carl Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, roped in in 1866 to give a royal finish to the newly united provinces of Romania). The other gallery contained a collection of late C19 & C20 Romanian painters, but oddly the style never got much past 'Douanier' Rousseau. Charming in the extreme, but anachronistic. We also went to a "Marriage of Figaro" at the local opera house. The house was typically C19 European, with boxes, gold and plush everywhere, and the performance was highly creditable, given that it was local, though not amateur. The orchestra, in particular, was excellent. There were routine references everywhere to the famed Queen Marie of Romania - wife of the heir of Carol I, King Ferdinand. She has always fascinated me, along with many others.   Everyone told us that though Bucharest was delightful, the best part of the country was in Transylvania in the Carpathians. So we may one day take a cruise from Budapest down the Danube to Constanta - where it meets the Black Sea.
Our next stop was Lisbon, which I had seen and loved before, and I wanted Koji to see and love too. That will be the subject of the next blog.

Mahabaliputram - Temples, Village Life and an Expensive Wedding

Jodhpur

Another town wih a Maharajah who is rich and influential. He owns two local palaces - one in the middle of a lake and one up in the surrounding mountains - a change from the flat plains of most of Rajasthan. The mountain palace is known as the Amber Fort. There is a very old Spike Jones song called 'The Danube Isn't Blue, Its Green". Similarly, the Amber fort isn't amber, but more of a light pastel yellow. The name ''amber'' comes from the Hindi for ''high'' - meaning high as opposed to low rather than a drug-induced state. It, like all good forts, is very difficult to access, and many visitors pay a modest few rupees to go up by elephant. But I do know my limitations, and we went over an appalling mountain road instead. When we arrived the guide said that we were wise to have eschewed the elephant option, as a week earlier one of the elephants had ''got angry'' and had thrown two Japanese to the ground. We could only surmise whether there had been a causal connection.
Arguably the Amber Fort is more impressive and in better shape than the Red Fort at Agra or at Jaipur, though it's a close competition. One dislay at the Amber showed a sedan chair by which the Maharanee was carried around. Because of the combined weight of her clothes and jewels, she was incapable of self-propulsion. Another curious fact was that the Maharajah in power in 1947 ran for political office, but lost because he couldn't speak a word of the local languages, having been educated entirely in English n England - Eton & Oxford.
Getting around the Amber Fort ws such an exhausting task for me that we called it a day after that and rested in preparation for another long and uncomfortable trip the next day to Narlai, a the apex of a triangle north between Jodhpur and Udaipur. We stayed in a modest palace which had been a hunting lodge for the M. of Jodhpur, and still owned and managed by a family member. It was pleasantly run-down, but under renovation, and we enjoyed the simple family atmosphere. We set out the next day to see a very ornate Jain temple, but were wearing shorts. They offered to lend us a kind of sarong, but we were also required to remove both shoes and socks, and I drew the line at this. I had been prepared on earlier occasions to take off my shoes, but not my socks. So we admired the temple from outside. An observation which came to me over and over throughout India was that state-subsidized pedicures would lift the morale of the population enormously.
Our next and last stop befor Mumbai was Udaipur, but more about this next time.

Nizam of Hyderabad

By the way, another Indian magnifico, the Nizam of Hyderabad, packed up, jewel cases and all, and decamped improbably to Australia. There he apparently set himself up as a kind of Aga Khan figure and invests prudently and does good works. I am captivated by the idea of the current Nizam responding to a respectful greeting with "G'day mate, how's it going?"

Agra

Hello everyone,
                      I am writing this from the palatial Al Bustaan Palace Intercontinental Hotel in the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman - one of our two subsitutes for Egypt. I believe that one reason for the hotel's name is that it s certain to "bustaan" one's bank balance - but it is luxurious beyond belief.
But this is about our journey from Delhi to Agra - the latter a chaotic, rather dirty town, redeemed only by the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. Anything I could say about the Taj Mahal would be cliched, but it is a wondrous thing, spoiled for us only slightly by the fact that we saw it on Sunday, when it was more than usually crowded. It is decorated by carvings into the marble which are filled with semi-precious stones - carnelian, malachite, amethyst and mother of pearl etc.
In the afternoon we were taken over the Red Fort. It is on an immense scale, and like all things called "forts" here do double-duty as both fortifications and luxurious palaces. In their latter manifestations they are at their most magnificent, with large rooms open to the air, able to be closed off with either silk curtains or silk carpets. The term ''red'' comes from the fact that they are built of red sandstone, with the palace areas in marble. Also in the palace areas there are huge amounts of filigree carved out of gold, silver and marble, and for anyone who has seen the Alhambra in Granada it is clear where the ''Moors" got their inspiration. The Moghuls were origininally Mongols who came to India via Persia, so the designs seem more Arabic than ''Indian".
After a night in Agra we went next mornng to Fatehpur Sikri - the huge palace built by a Moghul Emperor, who had to abandon it and return to the Red Fort afer 10 years because of lack of water. So it is a ghost palace, but maintained as much as possible by the government of India. Again, it is overwhelmingly magnificent in the usual way - sandstone, marble, gold, silver, filigree everywhere. Afte Fatehpur Sikri we were so exhausted that we abandoned the rest of the day's programme, dropped the local guide and pressed our way on to Jaipur. The latter is famous for being ''the Pink City" and home of the palace of the Maharaja of Jaipur. It is called the ''pink city'' for no other reason that the Maharaja in 1876, in anticipation of a visit by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), thought it would be nice if the latter were to be greeted by a city painted pink - and so it remains, though now a rather shabby, faded pink. But that same Maharaja - a builder - came up with the idea of introducing footpaths and verandahs for the convenience of shoppers. Most villages and towns to this day lack either footpaths or verandahs, except (rarely) where the British had enough interest to get involved in local town planning. Ordinarily one finds dusty streets and the local shops facing directly onto them. Most shops are windowless, thus dark and rather uninviting -  often extremely so.
The Maharajahs of Jaipur have always thought themseves rather magnificent figures, and did well out of the settlements conferred on the Princely States in 1947. So the current titleholder lives in private apartments doubtless as ornate and handsome as the ones open to the public. Like many other Indian princes he is immensely respected and, while having no actual power, wields a lot of influence behind the scenes - so we are informed.
Our next stop was Jodhpur - an uncomfortable 330 km by bad road across the arid plains of Rajasthan - but I shall stop here, with more to come as we go from Jodhpur to Udaipur and ultimately overwhelming Mumbai. For readers in NZ, is there yet any talk of changing the name of the Bombay Hills?
Till the next post.

Still n Delhi

Sometimes my computer (a cranky old netbook long overdue for the scrap/recycling heap) decides for itself when I have blogged too much. Such a decision was just made, as I was on the point of describing the imperial splendour of the Viceroy's Palace. First, it is immense, but the style, combining Graeco/Roman revival with large doses of both Moghal and Byzantine overlay - huge central dome, minarets etc - is a wonder to behold. No surprise that ordinary Indians were impressed by the Raj. The Palace is now occupied by the improbable figure of Sonia Ghandi - the Italian temptress now President of India.
As for Old Delhi it is dominated by the Delhi Red Fort - not to be confused by the far more impressive Red Fort at Agra. We were not allowed inside it, as it houses both the Delhi police and segments of the Indian military. On the other hand it flanks the ancient Indian markets of the Chandi Chowk - an impossible warren of slums and small trading outlets which fascinated us. How the Indian laws of Real Property cope with this (if indeed they do), defeats me. We were overwhelmed by the likes of the Chicken Market and the Fish Market as we bumped and ground our way through it all on the obligatory bicycle rickshaw.
In the evening we were invited to witness a full-on, no expense spared Indian wedding, held at a delightful boutique hotel called "The Manor". It houses a fabulous IndoEuropean restaurant called "Indian Accent" and we had a superb meal while witnessing the intricate and colourful proceedings on the lawn outside.
Enough for now. An account of the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort at Agra on the next occasion.

Hello again at last

We're baaacck!
                 When we left you we had just entered Cochin - the delightful capital of the State of Kerala. It is a busy port, but it's principal interest lies in the remnants of Portuguese and Dutch architecture (they colonised the area in turn) and the Spice Market. The buildings were not that impressive to start with and have not acquired much, if any, patina, but the Spice Market contains every spice we had ever heard of, and many that we had not. It gives the word "redolent" a whole new meaning. The hotel was was very calm and peaceful, and we were diverted by the guests - some very tatty French, and a collection of anachronistic old English trying hard to recapture colonial splendour - tropical kit and the family pearls.
Next we flew to Delhi and entered a wholly different India.
First, for myself I sorted out the difference between Delhi and New Delhi. Delhi (othewise known as Old Delhi) has been settled for a thousand years. New Delhi, to the south, was planned and arranged by the Raj when they moved the capital from Calcutta (now Kolkata) sometime in the later C19. It contains the Embassy Quarter and, most imposing of all, the Lutyens designed Vice-Regal Palace and the Raj Ministries flanking the spectacular boulevard leading up to the Palace. Koji will be posting pictures of all of this.

Sorry for the Hiatus

Hello everyone,
                  This is to apologize for the hiatus in posting. Since we wrote last we have been in a whirl of Delhi, both Old and New, Agra (Taj Mahal, Red Fort) and Jaipur (Pink City, Amber Fort) - whence we write - and find ourselves overwhelmed and exhausted at the end of each day. This is true even on ''driving'' days, as long journeys involve long hours because of thr traffic chaos..So this is just a small post to promise more details of ''The Golden Triangle" when we reach Mumbai in a few days and have built in some leisure time.
            K + K