These boots are made for walking…

Holidays are good for the soul. They are not half as good for the feet or for the skin or your hair, but soul mostly feels very good. There are a number of holidays that one can possibly take up:

… those that require you to just put your feet up (literally and figuratively) and chill. The sort in which lazy mornings give way to languid afternoons which in turn give way to aimless evenings and so forth. They are great fun. Gives you much time with self and many opportunities to reflect, ponder over and think about the Meta questions of life

… those that are all about action. The types that require you to pick up your most hardworking footwear and go huff, puff and have near death like experience. These are excellent too if you are upto it and also a believer in the – journey more important than the destination school of thought

… those that fall under the – 1000 places to see before you die kind of laundry list.

Some months back, B in her usual sort of bubbly and chirpy self remarked that we ought to do a holiday sometime soon. I nodded in a most agreeable way and got back to my consumer insights. Dear B is a bit of an ideas person. And she normally comes up with them at a rate of – three ideas per minute. So you can do the math and figure out how many ideas is her poor head processing, right?

Now I am a nice person (so what if I say so myself) and I do make it a point to listen to most of B’s ideas. Just because I can’t have any ideas of my own doesn’t mean I shall dismiss others na?

Me: Okay B, where must we holiday?
B: How about Laos?
Me: Uh, huh. Is a plan I reckon.
B: Or even Afghanistan. Kabul should be fun.
Me: How about Mount Everest?
B: I don’t know. Let’s try the K2 first.

Errrm, something like that.

Now this conversation recurred many times after this and each time the location that B would suggest varied from the exotic to the slightly bizarre. At some point we stumbled on the list – 1000 places to see before you die. Me, B and several others peered excitedly into the list and discovered that we needed among other things record breaking longevity. B excitedly pointed out places that she had visited, mostly in Europe. Hey, I have seen that and that and that. Now I quickly scanned the book and realized (not that I really needed a book to tell me) that I am very poorly traveled. Then I spotted it –Palace of Winds, aka Hawa Mahal. Hey, I have been there. And Taj Mahal, of course I have been there. Many times over in fact. And so on.

But then everyone has been to these places right?? Or may be not. One did discover with some amount of horror that B hadn’t been to any of these places. WHAT? They still let you keep the Indian passport?? And thus was born the idea to do a North India Touristy holiday. After much debating and arguments it was decided that our holiday would be: Jaipur-Agra-Varanasi. We had briefly contemplated including Lucknow, but given that there were time and cost considerations we dropped it!

The next four months, we planned the holiday. Somewhat obsessively even. Mid August was chosen as the time we would do the holiday - it had some zillion holidays which meant that the respective bosses and assorted people wouldn’t miss us terribly. We were also of the misplaced opinion that the weather shall be all cool and pleasant! Train tickets were booked and places to visit around the places that we had chosen were short listed.

By far our biggest pre-occupation remained – Hotels. We were obsessed with – the view. We wanted to be able to jump into the Ganges from our Varanasi hotel, to be able to wistfully stare at the Taj from our hotel in Agra and stay in one of those palaces in Jaipur! But after a few ambitious attempts, some reality check happened and we realized the need to exercise some self control. After much angsting, to and fro(ing), getting various people involved it was all set. Thus began the holiday:

Day 1: Chennai to Delhi
Fortunately or not this turned out to be the day of the London airport-almost terrorist attacks. B and I unaware of this walked into the airport feeling particularly happy about having booked on our low cost airline. However, when we reached the airport one realized all the mayhem. I have never ever seen the Chennai airport looking as packed and chaotic! And it seemed the city was traveling en masse to some place. Strangely enough reminded me of – Day after Tomorrow! In all this confusion, two things were realized:
1. B and I were on different airlines. Hallelujah!
2. And I was going to miss my flight as some threatening announcements were made to the effect.
I tried to battle through the Security Check and finally after much pleading, I was let to pass through it. A male passenger was not so lucky and as I ran to my aircraft I could hear him yelling and cursing me! I suppose luckily for me the number of women passengers who travel by air is usually significantly lower than the number of men (a bit like engineering college campuses) and so it is easier to go through the various queues and such. But I should not be made to feel guilty about it now surely?

Naturally if Chennai airport was chaotic, Delhi had to be worse right? By the time I managed to get my luggage and come out of the airport the power went off. Can you imagine??? The Airport of the capital city? For seven minutes there was darkness all around and while I was clutching on to my bag I looked around for B and Bro. Some random auntie grabbed hold of my hands and said, “Aa gayi beta?”. Ummm, thankfully power came and me and random uncle stared at each other with horror (for entirely different reasons). Finally the Big Brother was spotted who most suspiciously demanded to know about the identity of random uncle. Bah! No expression of love on seeing the dear sister it seems! B’s flight eventually landed and we did get home closer to midnight.

Day 2: Holiday Begins – Delhi to Jaipur
The Shatabdi is a good train. So what if they played the – Mera Saya soundtrack over and over again (so much so that even B, with her limited Hindi vocab was humming or at any rate pretending to hum the songs by the end of the journey)? So what if they served us bread with terrible terrible cutlets? So what if the train was parked at the farthest platform at the New Delhi Railway Station when we got off on the Ajmeri Gate side (and therefore almost missed the train). It was still fun. There was also an exceedingly well behaved little girl who was sitting next to us. Who would have thought? She slept through the whole journey. Yes, that is excellent behaviour!

Finally, Jaipur arrived. And the heat hit us. Errr, what about our cool and pleasant holiday? Anyway, first up some negotiation with the cabbie and autowallahs to take us to the hotel. Like the smart people that we were, we had called up our hotel guys who told us that their property was 1.5 kms from the station - this so that we didn’t get fleeced completely. We walked out with a completely authoritative air and told the autowallah to take us to the hotel.
He: Rs 60.
We: Errr, it is only 1.5 kms, Rs 20 okay?
He: Hahahahahahaha.
We: Rs 30? We are not tourists okay!
He: You see madam, new road is longer than old road. Old road is 1.5 km, but new road is 6 km.
B: New road to same place is four times longer. How interesting.
Me: Never mind. Rs 40 let’s go, okay?
He: No okay madam. Rs 50 I can take.
Us: Okay!

After this minor altercation and a ride along the bumpiest roads (I think the various roadblocks and bumps must be adding up to 6 kms after all) in the noisiest auto we reached our hotel. We looked out with much anticipation, as the Internet pictures had showed much promise. And did I mention that we were hotel obsessed? But when we saw the signage to our hotel, we were like, this is where shall stay????? Damn the Internet! And then Viola, we came to our hotel – Arya Niwas. And may I assure you that the hotel is splendid and a complete steal (At Rs 880 per night). It is a small time palace that has been converted into a hotel and there is a nice, quaint charm about it. The place is done up most tastefully too, complete with Rajasthani fabrics, blue pottery and stain glass lamps. We fell in love with the place instantly. The holiday had begun on a good note.

We had a two day halt in Jaipur, in which needed to see the city and also visit Ajmer and Pushkar. We decided that Day One would be the city tour. Armed with all the tourist guides we set out, negotiated with an auto guy for Rs 300 to take us to all the places in the city. First halt, the much famed – Palace of Winds aka Hawa Mahal. This is actually an extension of the City Palace and the purpose for which it was originally built with was to enable the womenfolk to observe city life without being noticed by the others. Errr, useful no? In many ways, it is the most marketed and enduring image of the city. The somewhat unusual structure gives you the sense that this is actually no palace, but just a façade, but once you step in you realize otherwise.

We enjoyed being here. For one it was very literally quite windy and pleasant. And me and B did peep out of a large number of windows (it is believed to have over 900 of them) and waved at the people on the road!! Oh well, many of them waved back also I can assure you! We also got a glimpse of the various love stories of Jaipur. Really. Anshul loves Anchal (phonetically compatible also) and Nirav loves Juhi Parmar (Errr Kumkum???) and so on. The walls are full of them. It’s a bit shocking to think that the signature building of one of the biggie tourist attraction places must have this kind of thing. Love is omnipresent eh?!

After feeling much happy with the Hawa Mahal experience, next was the Jantar Mantar. Now like many kids I grew up reading about the same in my science books and occasionally even in the Tinkles. The five observatories built by Sawai Jai Singh was part of many a childhood memory, the mere name Jantar Mantar sort of had a nice phonetic ring to it. As a teenager when we moved to Delhi, I remember with much excitement when as a Sunday treat dad took me to the place. May be it was the wrong age, or may be the place itself was a bit dull, but I was very let down by the experience. As I walked back with dad on a lovely Delhi December afternoon I distinctly remember dad assuring me that the one in Jaipur is far more impressive and was in working condition even.

But the Jaipur one was disappointing too. For a monument that was declared as a national one, it is not very well maintained with most of the signage and explanations fading away. Also it doesn’t help that some of the clearer explanations are in Sanskrit! Okay so the structures are impressive, especially the Brihat Samrat Yantra which helps to accurately tell us the time of the day through the help of shadow movements, but the 13 other structures were not really understood. What the place was becoming is an exercise in – how-many-pictures-can-I-click! With tourists climbing on to of various instruments in the observatory and going – Cheese. An AV presentation or better signage could have made the place so much better.

Next halt the nearby City Palace. Now to have a City Palace bang in the middle of the chaos of the city is really something! Apparently the present day royal family stays in one of the palaces and me and B hoped some regular school girl type fantasy might come true and one would run into dishy prince. Sadly not. The palace was beautiful, especially interesting were the miniature Rajasthani paintings and the famous peacock gate. There was a textile museum which showcased costumes that royalty wore, but one Banarasi garment seemed just like the other and with no story around it, we were very bored. That was the problem with our City Palace experience, there was no context, no story, no nothing.

The high point of the Jaipur trip was – Amer Fort. It was also the most tiring and we seemed to walk and walk and then walk some more. And just when you think that you might die, you reach the top of the place and somehow the view from the top makes it okay.

That was it with Jaipur, some shopping and a hearty Rajasthani Thali that me and B greedily ordered but could hardly eat concluded our day.


Day 3: To Ajmer and Pushkar
In the end analysis of our holiday this turned out to be the not so fun part of our holiday. The funnest part of this bit was our driver – Thomas! If love and god are omnipresent, so are Mallus. From Coconut Country to Camel Land, our man had traveled the distance. And he was ready with an opinion on everything and everybody! He also had an overall cynical air about him, as he dismissed our desire to holiday at these places as a result of media manipulation. Sample this, Kisi magazine mein likh diya ki Jaipur bahut khoobsurat hai, to har koyi pahunch jata hai. Kya hai yahan par? Sirf poverty. Ummm, me and B determinedly stared out of the car window while he spewed wisdom and venom!

They say of the Khwaja Moinuddin Chithi’s Dargah in Ajmer that, if one were to make a wish there it shall be fulfilled. It was this somewhat magical nature of this place that made us include this in our itinerary. Naturally, given this wish fulfilling bit the place was absolutely packed. So packed, that when you enter the main area of the Dargah, your bigger pre-occupation is in getting out safely and the wish is actually forgotten. But I still hope that that this works. We traveled for some four hours to a religious place where we spent precisely two minutes. Again a long walk back to the car, wherein we were chased by some persistent beggars who assured us that all our prayers were a complete waste, since we were ignoring them!

From there on we went to Pushkar, famous for the Camel Fair and the only Brahma Temple. Thomas strictly forbade us from shopping from the bazaar and told us to let any trouble makers know that we were guests of the Maharaja of Pushkar! Errrm. Could he read our mind? We walked some four kilometers to reach the – Temple of the Creator. And it was sort of okay. Though the thought of the walk back did make us contemplate about settling at that temple forever. We did finally pay a visit to the palace of the Maharaja, whose alleged guests we were and ate lunch at the restaurant there. Me and B did briefly wonder if man serving us what actually the Maharaja for he had a regal air about him!

After that the drive back to Jaipur and finally we crashed into the bed. While I was happy to roll over and play dead, B literally pulled me out and insisted that we go out - somewhere/ anywhere. And thus began our quest for shops. And what do we realize? Almost every shop is closed on Sunday! In a tourist place which is such a shopper’s paradise, that is some serious loss of business no? There must be a law against such a thing. So a dejected B and me got back to hotel and drowned our sorrow in some Dal-Baati-Churma. And we did our accounts for the two days.

Overall, what we had learnt by this time of the trip was:
…Fitness levels were very poor
… Mallu drivers must be avoided
… Everything tends to balance in the end. After two days of spending on auto, water, food and sundry stuff – me and B discovered to our much delight that both of us had spent identical sums of money.

On that very happy note and watching Charlie’s Angels we went to sleep. This as we prepared to wake up the next morning to head to the city with the most celebrated monument of love and the more exciting part of our holiday. That for later. Perhaps.

PS: This post is specifically for my family and N, who just won’t take my answer that – Nothing remotely fun happened in my holiday! I hope 2875 words will do the job of convincing them!