Rajasthan - Beyond the golden triangle

According to the travel and travel agents' websites the basic 'golden triangle' tour in India is Delhi, Agra/ Fatehpur Sikri, Jaipur, Delhi.  There are of course add ons galore, from Ranthambore National Park and the chance of a tiger sighting to Jodhpur, where the remarkable Mehrangarh fort crowns the heights above the old city;Udaipur for its lakes and palaces; Pushkar for the camel festival and any number of smaller towns and rural villages for a taste of particular festivals and lives other to our own. There is much much more to see in Rajasthan than is offered by the most obvious tours and aficionados of course travel to nooks and crannies of a state that is quite simply a treasure trove of history, heritage, sights and sounds.

The otherness of other places and other lives has changed dramatically with globalisation as our extraordinary communication networks bring us all closer together.  We have a wider view of the world without even going to see it and globalised markets have given most of us potential access to similar commodities, the young especially with their uniform tee shirts and jeans from Reykjavik to Beijing, their availability to any group governed by their cost not their absence. We are all evolving, progressing or just being pushed forward by the crowd, our starting points different; our desired destinations apparently all too similar as we rush, blinkered, towards our goals, never looking back at the things we are losing in our hurry.We leave huge gaps, allow our heritage to disappear or be spoilt, purposefully destroyed in some cases by political or religious imperative, sometimes just by fashion. Our education systems all over the world increasingly look forward, shedding and ignoring the lessons of the past, failing to provide the understanding we need to maintain and preserve as well as build successfully on historical foundations and move on in informed and better directions.

 Not everything either can or should be kept. In the Shekhawati area of  Rajasthan, where I have been travelling, there were once hundreds, thousands of ornately designed and painted havelis, the joint family homes of the wealthy merchants of the small desert Marwari community whose family names, Birla, Bajaj, Poddar, Mittal and Ruia for a start, are now synonymous with Indian business and entrepreneurship. Billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is a rare example who has rejected the strict Marwari non-drinking, vegetarian tradition, if not the ability to turn straw to gold. The Marwaris spread across India to Calcutta, Bombay, other great Indian cities and then abroad, their village or small town homes left often to minor family members and caretakers who finally claimed ownership by customary rights. Havelis, particularly in major towns and cities like Jaipur have often been well maintained and preserved, nowadays many are exquisite hotels or guest houses.  Others have suffered abandonment and encroachment, particularly in smaller, less visited towns and villages and the ragged niched walls in demolition sites show where the loss is permanent as the hideous new 'havelis' of recent enrichment spring up in older footprints.

                                  

There are settlements of tribal people and migrant workers living under plastic sheeting outside those decorated towns and villages, serving to remind the visitor that there has always to be a balance between preserving people and things. But there needs as a rule to be rules that are not made to be broken but to save the best of history and heritage, wherever in the world it still exists, and an education that encourages understanding of the value of that history. Determined iconoclasm is one thing that liberal society usually agrees to regard with horror, casual neglect and ensuing destruction happens without us noticing.  Travel to a hitherto unknown destination often gives us a distressing view of degradation and decay but, while we can report what we see and hope for change, we should be careful not to pass judgement too loudly on others' failings. We don't always do too well ourselves as I reminded myself most days when looking at crumbling haveli walls, ruined paintings and, most of all, oceans of plastic rubbish, chewed over by cows and goats who used most successfully to digest paper and other more natural packagings.

 Jan, then James Morris, the greatest of travel writers, wrote about a camel spotted in Oman seen happily drinking sump oil by a well but I'm not sure even camels' digestions can cope successfully with plastic. The extraordinary cow hospital outside Nagaur is filled with recovering amputees, halt and lame victims of traffic and agricultural accidents but it is hard not to wonder how many cattle might not also need treatment for excessive plastic ingestion. Brahmin bulls putting their heads through the village bakery door may these days find their daily bread wrapped in a pink plastic bag.

 As good friends in Delhi pointed out, Shekhawati is very much not off the beaten track but it does feel less travelled than that famous golden triangle.  Catching the overnight train to Bikaner from Sarai Rohilla, an old and not well known Delhi station, added a extra sense of slightly uncomfortable adventure to a very ordinary journey.  Approaching midnight it was deserted by Indian railway standards, certainly of porters, and my prayers for my train to arrive at the platform on my side of the high bridge across the tracks were not answered.  The question of which bag to leave where while carrying the other up and down stairs was answered by a friendly fellow traveller who saved me again on arrival in Bikaner when, once more, I was on the wrong side of the tracks.  I love overnight trains although this one was, as predicted by my same good if pessimistic friends who anticipated me coming down with swine flu at best, with rape and pillage an alternative option for the contemporary solo traveller,considerably dirtier than trains in India used to be, the conductor decidedly surly over my unconfirmed, or actually confirmation unmarked ticket. Once bedded in, I lay too long awake enjoying the sound of the train, falling eventually into such deep sleep that I was practically pushed out of the carriage into early morning  Bikaner with my eyes still closed.

I travelled there first with slightly mixed intentions that also took me up to Hanumangarh on the border with the Punjab, returning to Churu and Shekhavati via the Harappan site of Kalinbangan..  I wished to see more of the areas where the Vicereine, Mary Minto, whose Indian Journal I have recently edited, went on hunting expeditions with her family organised by Ganga Singh, the most famous Maharaja of Bikaner, who became a close friend to the family and whom she clearly adored. He perfectly lived up to the image of the glamorous, soldierly Rajput Prince, commanding the famous Bikaner Camel Corps during WWI, member of the Imperial War Cabinet and ADC to George V. Roles that were of less importance at home than his reforms in education, agriculture, law and prisons undertaken over a 56 year rule that ensured his almost iconic appeal to this day in Bikaner and surrounding areas.  His image or images  as well as those of his motor cars, Rolls Royces I think, soldiers and troop filled trains, are  almost standard as part of the fresco decoration of the havelis of the former Bikaner state. 

 Later buildings or more lately re-decorated havelis have been adorned also with eccentric portraits of film stars and other unexpected motifs contemporary with their dates into the 20th century.The local guides may sniff at these, comparing them adversely to the riotous more traditionally painted splendour of 18th and 19th century buildings,  but compared to the sort of appallingly glitzy abode recently built by the ex-Mayor of Churu opposite a row of demolished 19th century havelis, they remain buildings to charm and entertain their viewer. 

The architecture of early 20th century havelis evolved from more traditional Islamic inspired architecture, what we think of as Mughal or Indo-Saracenic arches and doors, as other influences arrived with the international products of buzzing import/export businesses.  Italianate Romanesque curved arches and more European motifs, hence an inflight of sickly cherubs bearing garlands, a particular and bizarre favourite in some of the extraordinarily kitsch Jain temples of the area along with glittering Belgian glass mosaic work, Persian and Venetian chandeliers, Dutch or Chinese and British tiles.

Traditional haveli decoration included walls of monumental painted elephants; domed ceilings crowded with dancing gods; stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata; the story of the camel borne lovers Dhola Maru, a profusion of dancing women; increasingly muddled up with colonial images, marching soldiers, both Indian and British; colonial officials standing, sitting, writing a letter; a postman delivering mail; monstrous cherubs; Queen Victoria, or so one supposes, with other quaint portraits of her near descendants; very occasionally the Buddha; Jesus, apparently smoking a cigar,in one picture; and always more trains, cars, soldiers, camels, elephants, and the gods dancing on to infinity or, once in a while, themselves being chauffeured in a limousine. They are the great glory of the  group of Poddar chhatris in the delightful town of Ramgarh where small painted havelis built by the Poddar and Ruia families to rival those in neighbouring Churu line the streets of the bazaar.

                                

The last cherry on the Ramgarh cake is the small Shani Temple where the belgian glass mosaic and intricate painting has been blackened by nearly 200 years worth of candles burned to reflect from the glass fragments and turn the whole space into a sort of devotional disco ball of flickering light. There is a plan afoot to preserve Ramgarh in its entirety before too many more sugar pink confections of houses are built on older foundations and before those dancing gods slip from their domes into the dust.  It is the perfect place and the people who live there are noticeably friendly in the casual unhurried and unpushy way of those comfortable in their surroundings.  Of course that is an equally casual perception but Ramgarh is a delight, aside perhaps from those who demand more 'entry fee' than the going rate to unlock the doors of the temple.-  conversely the caretaker at the Poddar havelis seeemed more interested in his newspaper and the healthy looking cows that graze the site than any proffered remuneration.

 The old city of Bikaner is filled with magnificently carved red sandstone havelis, their blue shuttered windows and enclosed balconies overhanging almost mediaeval streets which bustle in the days leading up to Holi. Mounds of coloured powder, giant sized plastic syringes, glass cases stuffed with sweets and cannabis leaves being diligently ground and mixed for bhang, pointers to anticipated festive pleasures.  Dogs lie on the remaining great tables close by haveli walls, stages really that were once so integral to their owners' lives, the centre of the home, where the women of an extended family chopped vegetables, ground spices, negotiated hierarchies and put their worlds to rights. Beyond the ancient walls, the city and the 16th century yellow sandstone Junagarh Fort grew and changed over time according to expediency, fashion or the sort of whim that impelled Maharaja Dungar Singh in the late 19th century to build the Badal Mahal, the Weather Palace.  Visitors today see a room decorated with swirls of stylised blue and white clouds punctuated by lightning shafts,images of monsoon like rain pour down the lower walls, a rare event in the desert city in the past. In the Maharaja's day, a water system allowed real water to pour down into a drainage system in the floor, for the entertainment, the guides say of the ruler and his children, while drummers summonsed thunder from their instruments.

 

Wealthy merchants did not have a monopoly on painted decoration in their homes and the forts and palaces of Shekhawati are richly painted and gilded; the sheen on their walls and pillars due to araish plaster, a variable recipe of lime, egg white, ground stone and tamarind that can be polished to a marble like finish. Their stone and marble work is carved into intricate patterns and scenes like the remarkable sandstone panels that cover the walls of Ganga Singh's 20th century Durbar Hall in the Junagarh fort. Ganga Singh's modernisations are much in evidence in the fort and so relatively recent is the departure of his family from these surroundings that they hold the echoes of energetic royal life. Family photographs, the Maharaja's office, desk, telephone may seem old fashioned but they are recognisably life as we know it. In the Prachina Museum next to the fort there are examples of his and his predecessor's clothes and wonderful 'prison' carpets, made in prisons as a means of rehabilitating prisoners and giving them a trade when they finished their sentence. The usual bits and pieces of tea sets and glassware are, as always, vaguely depressing as they gather dust in their glass cases.

 I don't know if Ganga Singh designed the silver gates he gave to the Karni Mata Temple at Deshnok, usually known as the rat temple.  With the glorious marble carving of the contemporaneous gate, the panels of unusually charming looking rats show a similar humour and love of animals to the stone panels in the Durbar hall. In fact this famous temple to the titulary deity of the Bikaner and Jodhpur royal families is filled with rats that are strangely appealing.  Teams drink in unison from great bowls of milk, tails hanging neatly in rows, the occasional adolescent misses its footing clambering over its relatives towards food and literally ends up in the drink.  I failed to see the white rat that brings all sorts of blessing but there were enough others in and out of pilgrims and ongoing building work to make you mind your foot work lest you tread on one. 

You might speed its reincarnation as a member of Karni Mata's extended family but it is still not considered a good thing and penalties in offerings to the temple may be steep and include donations of more silver rats.  On a warm spring afternoon the temple was surprisingly quiet, brahmin bulls bullying stallholders in the precincts for whatever they might get and few if any other foreign tourists in sight - the 'No Beggership' sign (really) on the temple's outer fence appears to be effective although perhaps the latter only arrive with the former.

 I was lucky in Bikaner, due to extreme impatience with queues, to collect a young guide, Atik, outside the fort who was able to speed up entry and knew his history plus no doubt all the good stories for tourists to which I am entirely susceptible.  He was equally not a bore and without his help I would definitely have got totally lost in the back streets of the old city, not seen where the cloth dyers work and probably not seen the frescoed Bhandeshwar temple, built one one enormous piece of carved stone, was it really meant to have been founded on a vast mound of melted butter? Finally, founded by the royal family, the Laxminath temple, as the rain clouds, much more regular these days, gathered on a darkening evening. Changing lives, modes of transport, fewer camel carts, more motorcycles and cars; jeans as much as salwar kameez; Bikaner feels still like an ancient desert town. In the old city, it may be noisy tuk tuks that think themselves kings of the road but the Brahmin bulls know who is really in charge and are reassuringly bossy over their territory.

 I was lucky too with my hotel, the Jaswant Bhawan, the former residence of the last Prime Minister of the state, adjacent to the railway station,  and now run as an hotel by his grandchildren.  Simple, spacious and comfortable rooms off courtyards, a sitting room filled with family photographs and books to be read, good straightforward veg and non-veg food, definitely home cooking. The family atmosphere added to by the presence of a new bride juggling her veil and armfuls of wedding bangles with a pot of honey, 'onny', requested at breakfast time by the handful of French guests.  In fact she has hotel experience with Oberoi hotels and with her new husband will in future be running Jaswant Bhawan but traditional appearances must be maintained nonetheless.

In Hanumangarh, close to the Punjab border, the country feels and looks much more like that green agricultural state, especially sloshing along on wet and muddy roads between borders of crop filled fields after a spectacular all night storm. I stayed in an invention of a so-called heritage hotel.  I have come across these before, concrete and plaster palaces complete with mughal domes and turrets that have spring up in an eyeblink in areas such as Sawai Madhopur to be filled with visitors to Ranthambore National Park.The Rajvi Palace seemed even more out of place; the relatively helpful if perplexed staff thought the same of me and they were probably right. Their major custom comes from local wedding parties and, from observation, other high days and holiday involving a good solid Punjabi family looking for a good solid lunch. I may have been the only person staying in one of the sparse but perfectly comfortable room in 4 floors of recently painted passages and verandahs.. Hanumangarh, reputedly a thriving town, is a poor place on a damp grey Sunday and seems not entirely to be sure whether it is an enormous farmyard or a centre of industry surrounding its spectacular, ruined fort which was what I had come to see.

One has the feeling that The Archaeological Survey of India signs bonked on monuments all over India are seen by government as a sort of mantra or spell conferring magical preservation from further damage and depredation and allowing withdrawal of official responsibility. Not unfortunately the case anywhere in the world let alone a huge and highly populous country where planning rules are flexible to say the least, government distant and people must live.  That having said the vast Bhatner Fort of Hanumangarh has had considerable restoration work on its walls and water courses whether or not it has now been ticked off the conservation list. The interior of the fort is more or less a local park with a ruinous temple on higher ground at one end. The great walls dominate the town, difficult to get a good view without an invitation to someone's roof involving reciprocal photography of most of the community and much incomprehensible hilarity.  A theme continued in both respects at the busy Mata Bhadrakali temple on a river bank a few kilometres out of town where photographs of architecture were impeded by both the usual pilgrim sheltering steel and corrugated passageways and the weight of would be photographic models.

                         

It's an odd thing the photography and, where children are concerned, the polaroid camera can be a boon although also likely to involve a fight at some point over ownership of images as crowds begin to gather. The desire to have your person recorded in some stranger's camera, probably then to be deleted, certainly unlikely ever to be seen beyond a one off glance at the camera playback window, is one I can never quite understand albeit sometimes works in favour of the photographer's wish for a particular image.  More often not. One young man, after whipping a comb out for a quick spruce up before his camera moment, pointed out crushingly that his image was excessively dark and he would be obliged if I should use the flash for a second effort.

From Hanumangarh to the Harappan site of Kalibangan, another overnight downpour having turned the lawns of the Rajvi Palace to a lake and smaller roads fringed with eucalyptus to muddy tracks , a dozing owl on a branch, fields and the high chimneys of brickworks stretching out on either side across flat land.  Raju, the excellent driver I was lucky enough to have, negotiated them without fuss in spite of every evening spent polishing the car paintwork, a thankless task in this weather. Almost as perplexed as the Rajvi Palace staff by my determination to visit somewhere he had never heard of, he was interested enough by the great antiquity of the site at Kalibangan to leave the car and explore the rather meagre contents of the museum, no cameras allowed, before we both walked into the site collecting quantities of clay-like mud on our shoes. 

 Here the usual ASI signs have not stopped local black salt burners driving tractors round the site to transport their product out but the major part of the excavation of the ancient town has been re-covered with earth, hopefully one day to be opened properly for viewers.  Meantime acres of pottery shards cover the ground, most no doubt centuries or millennia later than the Harappan civilisation, others, recognisable pieces of bangle or decorated pieces of a pot or a cup, look so like the exhibits in the museum and have become so hard with the years that is is easy for the imagination to peel away the layers of time to see a bangle, complete in the mind's eye, clinking with others on a wrist 4,000 years ago. 

The air dried and warmed up, the sun came out as we left wet green fields behind, a handful of rare as rare vultures flying high in the sky, and headed back towards the desert and Churu at the heart of Shekhawati.  Squeezing through the narrow gate in the centre of the city, the first sight of the Malji Ka Kamra hotel, may not be of breathtaking beauty like that never forgotten first view of the Taj Mahal but it is astonishing enough in its own way. A stupendous layered spearmint green confection of a 1920s restored haveli set in its own garden and adorned on the outside with bizarre statuary and wide terraces, inside with a forest of pillars and painted rooms. It is as good as it looks too, the staff are perfectly charming including the young and enthusiastic manager, Gaurav Kumar, who seemed one minute to be painting a wall, the next orchestrating early morning bird watching from which thick fog forced us into tactical retreat after a visit to Sethan Ka Johara reservoir, built as part of famine relief efforts in the final years of the 19th century. It is an attractive place through the early morning mist but all too obviously the local drinking hang out and littered with rubbish and broken botttles. The head waiter in the restaurant was exceptional. My only complaint, the cold in the dining room that whistled round the feet at dinner at this time of year, I could have done with ugg boots. O but there are electric fires in the rooms and the water is hot too after a run off of cold water into a bucket that is then used to water the garden.

 Lal Singh the knowledgeable and knowledge seeking guide to an area he has lived in all his life, provides carefully drawn maps and sightseeing lists to order and is a wealth of useful information. Also, again, so vitally important for impatient travellers, he is NOT boring and has ambitions for greater things.  I hope he succeeds. He lives in the fort at Mahensar and is busy rescuing anything he can afford of the doors, windows and smaller items that are being thrown out of havelis due to demolition or the desire for something new. Mahensar is a delightfully sleepy village, the last inside the border of the old Jaipur state, that holds one of the great treasures of Shekhawati, the Poddar golden haveli, the Sone-Chand Ki Dukan, as well as the haveli like 19th century Raghunath mandir with its families of quite strange doll-like Carrara marble gods.The priest, with the expected suitable show of reluctance, was prepared for a small fee to draw back the curtains that covered the shrines after opening hours while his wife bathed their two small sons and hung rows of washing in the sun that warmed the temple's upper courtyard. 

 

The Narendra Niwas hotel in the fort is quite clearly the place really to get away from it all although I was assured by the owners that there is wifi.  You would need to be fairly certain on your feet to survive endless stone steps and I am quite sure I would freeze inside those thick walls until the summer heat warmed the stone. Bathrooms are not luxurious for winter cold either but the food is reputed to be excellent, the owners are charming, the village peaceful and friendly and, sitting in your eyrie at the top of the fort,  it would be hard to find somewhere more or less with all mod cons, within touching distance of major cities, that felt more away from it all

In nearby Bissau, the fort, sold by its owners in the 1960s, is a crumbling wreck, now apparently owned by members of the extended Poddar family who live in slum conditions in one courtyard while the building dies around them.  Bissau too has its havelis but on brief acquaintance it is a dispiriting place full of plastic rubbish, a filthy polluted tank and a gloomy atmosphere of decay which is hard to fathom. It was a relief to reach the cheerful if almost deserted Dundlod Fort, now a heritage hotel.As its website suggests, I did feel had stepped into bygone times if only as bygone as the oldest landrover in a shelter in the corner of the courtyard which was probably about the same age as me.  My grandfather certainly had the same model and the fort has the recognisable air of a country house wherever in the old world many generations of the same family have lived. Life has changed but the essence of the place remains the same among old photographs, venerable furnishings, threadbare carpets and endlessly touched up paintwork.  It is a lovely place and familiar up to and including the rather chaotic sitting room/office on the top floor where an old black labrador declined to move beyond a gentle thump of the tail and apparently only ever stirred to find a quiet corner by a pillar when the need arose to make a mess which nobody might ever notice.

                            

 Nawalgarh was heaving with people on the countdown to Holi and is crammed with beautiful havelis. The Poddar Haveli Museum, a 1920s haveli that has been beautifully restored is one of its treasures with around 700 frescoes of every possible subject.  It has slightly mistaken but faintly touching additional exhibitions such as that on 'Forts of Rajasthan', a room full of peculiar polystyrene models of the same that may possibly have been made by pupils of the school on the upper floors of the building.  The Bala Qila Fort is hidden away in the bazaar area where guide books threaten harassment for lone travellers. Without the help of an excessively helpful young man, I probably wouldn't have found my way through the crowds, certainly lost my car for good, but the Bala Qila is worth a struggle for its glorious Sheesh Mahal. It is reached nowadays through a shop and someone's house, the someone surprisingly producing an official book of entry tickets as she ushers you through her bedroom. The small round kiosk of a room was the dressing room of the Maharani of Nawalgarh, it is very red and very dark but has stunning painted scenes of Jaipur and Nawalgarh, ornate mirror work and, best of all, a perfectly glorious painting of the turbanned Maharaja with a shotgun under his arm and a sam browne belt over a green tartan shooting coat and what used to be called Strathcona boots.  

The huge Mandawa fort and hotel has lost that atmosphere of home for all its painted rooms; individuality bled out under the weight and requirements of a serious business catering for group tourism.  In fact the whole town of Mandawa seems set up to cater for group tourism and good luck to its shopkeepers, hoteliers and restaurants.  I just find it less interesting and I find myself also resenting the somewhat patronising air of those who cater for the herd.  I can feel ice entering my soul, stiffening my spine and turning me into a sort of demanding dowager - put me half way up a mountain with a donkey, a tent, frozen feet and a cup of tepid tea and I would never behave like that but I resent paying to be treated like a mindless idiot and to be expected to think the bad is good because it is different. I thought the food, intended no doubt to suit tourists like me, even chosen from the a la carte menu after a quick view of the dreaded buffet, was dull to dismal.  On the other hand, the pool area is well done; there is an efficiently run spa, of which I made happy use; I had a heater in my roof top bedroom and my bathroom with a sunken bath on a different level and inexhaustible hot water, was nothing but pleasure.

Jhunjhunu where the Jhunjhunwalas unsurprisingly come from has, apart from some interesting havelis that stand above the noisy rush of the market,  a popular and rather appalling mandir, Rani Sati. It celebrates a 14th or 15th century Sati, Narayani Devi, who may or may not have spontaneously combusted after her husband was killed by Muslim invaders.  The story varies but it is certain that the glorification of sati in an area where a number of women have burned to death on their husband's funeral pyres since the mid 20th century is frowned on by the authorities and by women's groups.  Meanwhile the mandir,whatever its original form, has become a uniquely unholy riot of bad taste and inferior craftmanship. Huge amounts of money have poured in, allowing everyone his or her chance to add a bauble to the whole.  It is like stepping into a huge, over-decorated cake but my it is busy during the Holi holidays and it is kept immaculately.

 Those Jhunjhunwalas are responsible for the dramatic refurbishment of the fort that stands high above the town of Laksmangarh, apparently as a guest house for their global family.  I was required to examine everything from very dusty chandeliers to fridge interiors once I had bought my way through the padlocked entrance into the smartly painted interior. The upkeep seems to be supported by the letting of lofty roof space for a forest of aerials that make the place look like a major communication hub which I suppose it probably is. There is a panoramic view of the town including the enormous char chowk four courtyard, Ganeriwala haveli.

Salasar is a small town that has grown to fit the millions of visitors to its remarkable Hanuman temple, Salasar Balaji, where metal barriers and a one way system to the sanctum sanctorum of the temple indicate its importance as a pilgrimage site. Built in the early 19^th century, its popularity is further illustrated by yards of silver wall panels and doors illustrating the life of the monkey god, within which teams of priests field offerings of food that are later returned for family feasts or donated to the poor.  There is a certain amount of unholy but relatively friendly argy bargy involved with Holi crowds but this must be nothing to the hordes that arrive to fill the array of dharamsalas in the town on a temple festival day.

                 

       

En route for Holi in Khimsar, the magnificent 12^th century Ahhichatragarh Fort at Nagaur has been beautifully renovated, its pavilions, painted rooms and remarkable water systems now providing spectacular space for major events such as the Sufi festival in February.  As a refuge from too much Holi festivity and indelible pink powder, the Dune Village, a slightly ersatz desert experience camp belonging to the Khimsar Fort Hotel probably couldn’t be bettered but the day itself dawned cold, windy and grey after the glorious clear desert night and full moon the night before. Much to the relief of the staff whose only guest I appeared to be, I decided one night was enough and decamped for the comforts of the main hotel and a day spent reading on the ramparts.

 The Manganiyar musicians who arrived to play by the camp fire the evening before had ended up with an appreciative audience of precisely one as Belgian and British groups headed straight for their buffet and half bottle of wine ration at the first possible opportunity.  It turned out to be rather an expensive concert, not helped  by my determination to have a whole bottle of wine at dinner, half bottles were off for solitary travellers anyway, which was clearly considered slightly shocking but did effectively drown the rather dreary food. The unfinished bottle appeared again the next morning, carefully wrapped, to carry with me, and, when I thought I had actually hidden the remains, the next morning too….  

 

I stayed in Phalodi in the Lal Niwas haveli hotel which may be almost the only hotel in Phalodi but according to local rumour never has anyone staying. Its good veg restaurant is a draw for locals, mainly Jain businessmen who market the products of innumerable small artisans and jewellers in tourist centres like Jaisalmer. Old red stone havelis are inhabited by extended and extensive families, open doors show quick fingers threading beads, hammers beating silver chains. New houses from newer wealth have sprung up next to old but the town around the small locked fortress is quiet and seems somehow like the end of the road. It was indeed the end of the road for me, a final night after the temples of Osian and at last seeing the Koonj, the elegant red eyed Demoiselle Cranes whose migration across the Himalayas to winter in this part of Rajasthan is the stuff of myth.  In Khichan village down the road from Phalodi, they are fed every morning in a fenced ground and have become an important tourist attraction.  For myself, I had rather see them wandering sedately among the water buffaloes by the several small lakes in the vicinity and taking off to fly lazily over the flock, practising for their staggering journey to come.

  

Rainbow Travels of Delhi arranged my travel in Rajasthan and managed to re-organise things for me at very short notice as I changed my mind about where I wanted to go or stay.

Crumbling splendour

 

 

 Back to West Bengal where a crumbling treasure trove of little visited but once important towns and former trading posts decorate the banks of the Hooghly River north of Calcutta - an obvious tourist draw one would imagine.  As it is the roads are so bad and any sort of tourist infrastructure scant to non-existent that few people beyond Bengal, and few enough of them, ever visit Serampore, Chandernagore, Chinsura or Hooghly; respectively the former Danish settlement;the former French Settlement, still looking today like French colonial towns look from Hanoi to Pondicherry; the former Duth/British settlement and the headquarters of the British East India Company before the founding of Calcutta.  There are others too, each with their own stash of temples, mosques, a Portuguese church here, a cemetery there and Kalna with its spectacular temple complex that we sadly only had time to see at a distance from the road.

Travel time or lack of it  is the greatest problem when attempting to visit those forgotten places of the world that have fallen off the beaten track or indeed where the main road really is not much better than a rutted track. We were heading for Murshidabad, former capital of Bengal after the Nawab, Murshid Quli Khan transferred it from Dhaka at the beginning of the 18th century, the roads are appalling and we were too short of time and the daylight which at least slightly reduces the risk of accidents on dreadful surfaces where everyone is out for himself only. Due to India's east/west distance, the sun rises and sets much earlier in the East than the west and in Bengal darkness comes all too quickly not long after 4.30pm. Before that time we saw what we could of Bengali pastoral life, cattle, goats, rice crops and cotton - the brightly coloured dyed and spun thread drying on huge bamboo spools, piles of heavy read cotton quilts stuffed with real cotton wool, the most obvious locally manufactured product in small roadside shops - the countryside was very pretty too in some areas and particularly so around Murshidabad itself.

It always seems a privilege to be alone in any great historical site. At the same time, it is a shame that tourists to India tramp the same circuit round Rajasthan, Kerala, Goa, with dashes of Mumbai, Delhi and, more occasionally, areas of Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and perhaps a summer trip to Himachal Pradesh or Ladakh for those who crave mountains. West Bengal, starting with Calcutta of course, is packed with unique pleasures, as indeed is neighbouring Bihar, albeit of very different and more ancient forms in the main. Darjeeling gets a sprinkling of visitors but Eastern India has staggering cultural wealth that is largely ignored by foreign tourists when there are few obvious hotels, roads and communications are pretty chaotic, and, as a result, journeys take longer than most brief holidays allow.

It is a serious waste as ignored palaces that have great heritage value crumble quietly away. In Murshidabad
there is a certain amount of renovation ongoing on some of the major buildings – naturally that meant depressing NO ENTRY signs but the beautifully maintained ruins and grounds of the gigantic Katra mosque are cause for some optimism for the rest, likewise the restoration work on the vast imambara by the Hazar Duari Palace, the biggest of all the Murshidabad buildings, designed by Colonel McLeod Duncan of the Bengal Corps of Engineers and begun in 1829 to be a British official residence and now a Museum under the auspices of the Archaeological Survey of India holding an assorted collection of possessions of the former Bengal royal family



Sadly the neo-classical houses that remain in private ownership are suffering the worst as families have presumably disappeared down the rough road to the great cities, seldom to rattle back to deal with horrendous maintenance issues and bills in old family homes. One that has been restored, outside at least, to a positively disneyfied extent is the house at the centre of the Katgola Gardens which belongs now to a family trust judging by the signs.  There is no entry to the interior of the house so there is no telling whether that has been restored to a level to match its alarmingly bright but nonetheless rather splendid exterior - at least it doesn't look as if it will fall down any time soon.  For those with a love of cartoon lions, the palaces of Murshidabad take several prizes with their exterior guardian beasts - they are quite extraordinary

 

For a British visitor, Murshidabad is a series of slightly surreal discoveries with a house/palace round every corner looking like smaller or not so small at all versions of Blenheim or Buckingham Palace. Well really perhaps like Raj Bhavan in Calcutta or Belvedere, former residence of Lord Kitchener when he was Commander in Chief at the beginning of the 20th Century, but they amount to the same thing too and we were the only foreign tourists in the whole town, actually almost the only tourists apart from a handful of small groups of very local visitors. In Serampore and Chandernagore en route we saw Danish and French versions of the same neo-classical style. In Serampore, the old Danish trading settlement, the Danish Church, St Olavs is attended only by goats and falling down; the large mansion that is now Serampore College was built by British Baptist missionaries in the days when missionaries still thought broad education was at least as important as stuffing any form of Christianity down other people’s throats. It must be said that the theology professor who caught us loitering in the grounds appeared to take rather a disappointingly different view but she was kind enough to make sure we took in every detail of the College.

Few people were as disposed to friendliness or indeed the rather forcibly pressed better understanding of the treasures we encountered with the good professor and we felt unusually alien in Murshidabad where we were clearly curiosities but not in any way ones to be encouraged. We were lucky enough to meet a group of women who took us on a forbidden tour of the interior of one great house with apparently no wish for any more gain than to show us a secret world that was in their purview. With them we felt we had hit real gold. This is beginning to sound like a moan but the truth is I can’t wait to get back to see more of West Bengal and its hidden places. Let’s hope that the new road being built north of Calcutta parallel with the Hooghly opens up the area for the enrichment of its people and future tourists and that all the other required appurtenances of tourism are developed there for it to become another important destination on the map of India. I hope that would be a good thing for all concerned.

There is no reason for Indians to celebrate the Battle of Plassey and the 19th century monument on the battle field sits in a rubbish filled enclosure with a small tea shop nearby to fuel the local card players sitting by its iron gated entrance.  It seems, however, that the prospect of future tourists has not escaped the thoughts of the local authorities as the adjacent inspection bungalow is being renovated, theoretically at least, to be a small museum.  The present 3D plan of the battle field is perfectly understandable and looks like a school project in a glass case with a badly shattered top - the caretaker showed great enthusiasm for the plans afoot to improve the show.

There may be little atmosphere indeed on the field of that extraordinarily important battle but the peaceful graveyard at Cossimbazar on the outskirts of Murshidabad has it in spades.  Here, Warren Hastings first wife and baby daughter are buried beside a handful of soldiers and merchants both independent and attached to the East India Company, short lives memorialised, like in the famous South Street cemetery in Calcutta with huge obelisks and pyramids and hefty blocks of stone.  The nawabi Jaffarganj cemetery just down the road to the North holds the graves of hundreds of members of the royal family from 1760 up to the present day and is somehow a less melancholy spot - these after all are the bodies of those who belonged here whether or not they too had lives cut short by disease or war or childbirth. Several of the graves are decorated with blue and white Dutch tiles interestingly applied, often upside down with no regard to their neighbours but presumably to offer something to all possible viewpoints.

My Mother joined me on this trip, indefatigable in her 80th year and rather better on her feet often than I am with an irritatingly bust up ankle.  She was slightly surprised by the delights of the 'Hindu Kitchen' dhaba on the Murshidabad road where she definitely, to her extreme disappointment, couldn't get a Kingfisher beer and was lucky to find bottled Sprite.  She was rightly horrified by the dining room decor of the 'Sunshine Hotel', virtually the only one in Murshidabad that we discovered, that went in for a line in purple curtains, patterned banquettes and everything clashing in dismal shades that would be hard to exceed for bad taste.I would have classed it as a soggy carpet hotel and expected odours of damp but they had had the sense to settle for tiled floors and the place was spotlessly clean - staff were chilly and entirely uncomprehending. The wedding party we encountered looked stunned in their best clothes and the wedding flowers wilted sadly. Possibly I would have thought a cockroach or two a decent exchange for the dining room curtains but still....The beer was cold, the red wine was positively frozen so we did without it, the food at good basic level was good and basic leaving aside a mistaken line in breakfast.  My blackberry was stolen from my room - more fool me I suspect.

Punjab observations

On the plains of the Punjab, in the city of Patiala, past glories are crumbling.  How active a restoration plan responsible for the closure of both the Sheesh Mahal Palace and most of the massive Qila Mubarak, the Fortunate Castle, currently is, is difficult to discover.  The great walls of the Qila Mubarak are apparently being worked on, slowly; the galleries in the Sheesh Mahal have been close for 2 or 3 years and are expected to be so for at least the same time again - not much activity there is apparent.  For all that Patiala is a charming place, more like an overgrown village than the second largest city in the Punjab after Chandigarh.  The wide streets and great buildings of the town easily give way to busy, narrow streets in the bazaar, seductive with goods on display. The great abandoned palaces, particularly the Sheesh Mahal with its red towers and improbable  'Lakshman Jhula' suspension bridge stretching across a now dry tank retain a faded romance assisted by a notable lack of tourist traffic. 2 remarkably disapproving statues on Queen Victoria, one minus an arm and most of her nose hold sway in the remains of the garden. On this flying visit we had little time for exploration beyond the purported major sites but the city, within touching distance of Chandigarh airport and wide range of hotels, would bear longer exploration although it might perhaps be worth waiting for the palaces to re-open, if that ever happens during this lifetime...

In the Qila Mubarkah the only room open, without running the gauntlet of the security guards on the main gate as we did, hurrying past them and the no entry signs when they weren't looking, is the Durbar Hall.  In truth braving the enraged but impotent security was hardly worth the effort of walking passages and courtyards with no possibility for interior exploration. The Durbar Hall too is well policed when it comes to photography - utterly ridiculous given current levels of preservation of exhibits which are mainly in any case an impervious collection of swords and similar, massive dusty chandeliers and candelabra on a giant's scale,  with a handful of British royal portraits of the standard description - Kings Edward VII and George V and their queens.  Full length mirrors surrounding the walls make surreptitious photography difficult - it seemed to me that the handful of staff enforcing such strictures would be a good deal better employed in polishing the silver clad carriage, presumably a royal conveyance before the early 20th Century Maharaja, Bhupinder Singh, invested in a fleet of Rolls Royces, which has turned almost irredeemably black.

The deer park, former hunting ground of Maharajas, holds the usual rather depressing collection of caged birds including, improbably, a very sorry looking emu, with enclosures of various deer and gazelles from the ordinary to the more exotic and beautiful black buck.  It is really somewhere that one would rather not go although a mixed collection of rabbits seemed to be doing what rabbits do perfectly happily but oddly, in spite of burrowing huge holes, not apparently effecting their escape. Other gardens such as the famous Baradari botanical gardens will have to wait for a more leisurely visit but one suspects for now that Patiala is not entirely on top of its tourism potential.  Most friends in India were inclined not to get much further than poor jokes about Patiala pegs and excess thereof.

Back in the environs of famously well laid out modern Chandigarh with its modern urban architecture, the attractions are the feted Rose Garden, to foreign eyes just a perfectly acceptable urban space with flowerbeds; Sukhna Lake, a great expanse of man made reservoir much used for local recreation; a plethora of iconic buildings and venues for legislation, entertainment, sport and education.  The most bizarre monument of all, the Rock Garden, was designed by an unknown transport official in his spare time, Nek Chand began to build his extraordinary dream from recycled rubble and rubbish more than 50 years ago. Today this eccentric park covers more than 40 acres, populated by strange imaginary tribes of people and animals made of anything from shards of china and electical fittings to broken bangles and broken rock.  The mangroves and baobab trees, like the great cliffs above meandering paths are made from cement filled sacks pushed into shape before setting permanently.  Waterfalls crash down man made gorges with scaled down villages of pavilions and cottages crouching above as giant out of scale gods glare down from the plateau.above. Vast coloured mosaic walls are a Gaudi mirror image and the Rock Garden, not surprisingly, has become a major tourist attraction and a popular wedding and concert venue where strange mosaic horses look down on proceedings from the top of concrete and sacking arches and a rather sad camel gives rides to unimpressed children.

Punjab university, based in Chandigarh, is a famous institution, its second campus on former slum land, growing fast; its various schools known for excellence in their disciplines.  For a foreigner used to nicely heated classrooms and certainly well heated hostel space, a university like this, is, for all its modernity, quite a shock to the system.  British students would be out protesting on the streets if they had to live in unheated surroundings and the winter in Chandigarh, a chill wind blowing down from Shimla and the mountains that are the backdrop to the city, is cold.  Otherwise the city offers most modern amenities although I am assured by a current student that shopping is not up to much even in modern malls and cinemas are no better than they are in most Indian towns where cinema going is a noisy, smelly, often uncomfortable, crowded and excessively social event only moderately focused on watching a film.  My meanders round the central pedestrian shopping area resulted in new heels for my boots that cost 60 rupees and are unlikely ever to wear out since they appear to have been recycled from good Punjabi tractor tyres.

I stayed in a Marriott Hotel in central Chandigarh - there is a wide enough range of hotels - no surprises in the Marriott and a proper pizza oven to suit entertainment of hungry students. In better range of their pockets and very much to my taste was the splendidly formica clad Punjabi Restaurant (you might need to identify the right one of potentially hundreds of the same name). It is the sort of place, a clone of the best restaurant in Hong Kong, the old Indonesian Restaurant, in Happy Valley, that you know without question will be good - all about food and sod the look of the thing. Full to bursting with locals and students at all hours, this is good honest local food at quite spectacularly good and honest prices. £4 perhaps for double the amount two hungry people could eat including phenomenal tandoori chicken, roti, dal, rice, pickle and so on. Unbeatable.

The Serai, Jaisalmer

The Serai

Unheard of rain fall levels are greening the Great Thar Desert in Rajasthan where all was previously sand. The great fort of Jaisalmer rises today not from dunes but from a rough sea of hardy shrubbery. The sun nevertheless fights back with undying force; if it fails to dehydrate the land so dramatically as in the past it will certainly succeed in dehydrating you and visitors to the remarkable oasis that is The Serai tented camp are strongly advised to drink plenty of water, wear hats and layer on the sun cream. The temptation 'though is to drink more of the delicious range of cocktails on offer and, if the sun gets too much, to retire to a beautifully appointed tent or to the hedonistic luxury of the Spa for a massage with wondrous smelling natural oils. I may have been camping recently on a desert island with no visible amenities or even fresh water and thought it good entertainment but I could get a serious taste for really high class hotels and no cockroaches.

The 21 beautiful tents of The Serai are laid out round a desert garden where the sounds of water, from a reversed stepwell – you go up the steps to the water instead of down – blend with early morning birdsong. Little else breaks what seems an almost other worldly level of peace, especially for those flying in from the traffic mayhem of one of the great Indian cities, aside from an occasional chorus of twilight barking from the local farm dogs. Young staff in white uniforms, small, bright coloured turbans known as poths on their heads, silently lay white cushions on the sandstone seats at the entrance to tents in the early morning and dry steps after a gigantic thunderstorm during the night – the sun in any case is rising and will finish the  cleaning up job, thirstily sucking up the last drops of water.

All here is based on sand and white –  other colours: the olives and emeralds of a desert garden; touches of blue; cushions in the tent ‘s entrance sitting area, a woven rug in the bathroom: serve to accentuate the calm elegance of the overriding scheme that extends even to natural coloured warm shawls to hold off the always unexpected cold of a desert evening. Natural coloured leather covers a campaign style chest holding the mini bar, there is even a leather pouch for the rechargable torches that are barely needed to walk garden paths at night that are otherwise lit gently to detract less from the vast arc of starry sky.  Hurricane lamps hang here and there from trees and pick out the design of water courts and steps. The desk in the outer lobby of each tent is well supplied with a selection of the same antique leather bound books that make up the library contained in a huge circular bookcase in the bar where leather armchairs invite the idle or folding campaign chairs can be moved nearer to tables for a game of chess or an attempt at more focused and less soporific reading. There is writing paper too, sharpened pencils for the important travel journal ready in stone jars and always a bowl of saffron marigolds, potted sunshine.

Blessed warmth for those non-Indians who do not embrace any form of cold as a delightful novelty is provided in winter by healthy numbers of efficient radiators in bedrooms and bathrooms – thank god for not having to share with a husband who always turns everything off. Hot water bottles of course appear miraculously in turned down evening beds besides the excitement of purple tissue wrapped surprise presents left on pillows by all year Father Christmases.  There are a/c units against summer heat and the swimming pool, bright blue and icy cold in winter but welcome in summer in additon to the outdoor jacuzzis in some of the tents.

Everything works, from electric plugs to the most flattering mirrors ever - how clever to make everyone look tall, thin and glamorous and how fitting in this most glamorously low key place that runs like the best country house or the greatest of old-fashioned Italian hotels where service was what counted.  Of course, at The Serai, perfect service, invisible until needed when staff, seemingly with skills of bilocation miraculously appear, is the icing on the cake of wonderful design, management and the extraordinary engineering that has somehow floated, or so it appears, a dream hotel on 100 acres of sand. The sand has borne further fruit in an organic vegetable garden growing rocket, herbs, cabbages, carrots, and shortly oranges and artichokes besides a field of wheat and other ingredients to be translated in the kitchen into homemade herbed breads and almost anything you could want to eat from this continent to Europe and SE Asia. It all starts with eggs benedict for breakfast and, for those minded to diet, temptations go from bad to worse, although it would be quite easy to live here on the freshest and most delicious salads straight from the garden.

Tents are astonishingly private, spread well apart round the garden, only their roofs showing from the central path and little indication, except an occasional dining room, bar or evening camp fire encounter, of any other guests staying at all. There is space to breathe and more and expeditions to be made for those inclined.  Tea and a sundowner on the dunes means a drive, racing chinkara gazellles skittering away in the distance or nilgai, blue bulls, nervily standing to watch the jeeps approaching.  After that a camel or camel cart ride to a virgin sand dune that looks as if it has been raked, the perfect markings the product of wind and sun not man. It has to be said that for the novice or the unwary a camel ride can be unexpectedly bumpy - T E Lawrence didn't ride across Arabia without any practice. Once safely relieved of camel responsibility one is revived by sandwiches, cakes and biscuits, all home made of course and more importantly even than tea, pink champagne to match the glowing evening sky before a return in the final minutes of twilight to a welcoming bar, bath and dinner.

Visits to Jaisalmer city are also suggested entertainments and give a taste not only of the glories of the Rajasthan past but also the massive development of the past few years that will continue speeding the desert  into the future. Where once the city was inside the walls, now it spreads across the desert plains where windmills and pylons march across the land and every village is punctuated by mobile telephone towers all too closely clustered by the newly built stone houses of inhabitants who have not yet realised the perils of too close an association with the machinery of this brilliant means of communication.  Neither have the downsides of ever useful plastic bags yet fully been realised in India in spite of efforts in some districts - the rubbish is appalling and indestructible - the digestive systems of goats and camels may thrive on thorn bushes and god knows what natural rubbish but not on plastic and nobody including any government service finds its removal to be their responsiblity.

The intricacies of the stone carving of the great havelis and jain temples, the massive walls of the fort still make Jaisalmer worth seeing but this is a town now with other aspirations and ambitions that look to the future more than the past. Nowhere and nowhere better perhaps have those aspirations come to fruition than in the story of Lakshmi, the uneducated vegetable seller who threatened a a film maker with a mouli when he tried to photograph her 40 plus years ago.  That young woman is now a great grandmother, her son the Sarpanch, head of a village panchayat council and a man of stature and dignity whose children are university students or graduates in professions including medicine and dentistry.  Lakshmi herself is a strong woman not above threatening importunate photographers with a mouli still but these days not in earnest as she produces a feast of local food for friends, including that documentary maker of years before, that rivals the food in The Serai. O dear, the badri and ghee, the mirchi and the beans, desert fruit, the roti - I can taste it still.....

Development inevitably means losses that balance the gains, young people aspire to changing lifestyles. Village life revolves less round the cycle of seasons and agriculture leavened in the past only with home grown entertainments and more on the availability of communications, transport, education possibilities and daily involvement with wider contemporary issues, local and national. Old skills are no longer so valued and long held traditions here will become part of history, preserved only as distant folk memories and in museum cases.In the case of the ancient music of  the Rajasthan desert,  the hereditary skills passed down through the Manganiyar or  Langha communities, the Muslim musicians of the desert, may disappear in the rush to other entertainment and occupation and perhaps live on at best as taught skills for theatre performance.  Even the Whirling Dervishes of Egypt perform their rites more often these days as staged entertainment than as true religious ceremony. For now, as some of the great Manganiyar performers, like Sakar Khan, the honoured and revered Koraicha player, slip into old age, the music hangs on.  A firelit performance by a group of musicians at The Serai is an unforgettable and highly emotional experience that inexplicably affects the deepest corners of the mind and spirit and which one can hardly bear to end.