India - Udaipur’s Royal Cenotaphs and Boat Ride

We woke up fairly early and tried to get in touch with travel desk person to see about changing our tickets to delay our departure from Udaipur, but it just seemed as though it would be too much of a hassle to change everything downstream (i.e. train tickets, hotels, flights, etc.). We did still try since Udaipur was turning out so much better than we had initially anticipate, but it was not looking very good...so, we went downstairs at 9am to meet with Doulet, who took us for breakfast at Café Edelweiss.

Quick Digression:
Along the way, Doulet told us that one of Udaipur's claims to fame is that it was the setting for a significant portion of the James Bond movie, Octopussy. It was the eponymous Bond girl's island in the movie. Many enterprising hotel owners and merchants around town show the movie a few times a day on little movie screens or large TVs to tourists curious about exactly where it turns up. Melanie and I ended up passing on the movie, but got a kick out of the whole situation.

Café Edelweiss is a German bakery that was highly recommended in most our guidebooks (they're even top of the list of the Udaipur travel guide on Wikipedia). While my personal preference would have been for a traditional India breakfast, I didn't want to be high maintanence, so we just ended up dining there. If you do ever find yourself in Udaipur at this particular restuarant, my advice is that you don't get the marble cake (which was dry and flavorless) and instead get the cashew nut crumb cake - very unique and quite delicious.

We also got a kick out of the fact that all of the patrons of the tiny restaurant were tourists, and between the two of us, Melanie and I could understand every conversation going on around us. There was a Swiss family, an Austrian couple, a French family, a Chinese couple from Taiwan, and also some English travelers. Oddly enough, there was only one American there.

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After breakfast, we went to visit the cenotaphs (memorial sites) for all of the Udaipur Maharanas (other former kingdoms had Maharajas, but Udaipur was different). Doulet gave us a very good explanation of many things, including Satis, city naming conventions, different aspects of Udaipur and Hindi, etc.


We spent quite a bit of time walking around the various cenotaphs. Doulet had quite a bit of information on whom the various structures were constructed for (all of them were Maharanas - some were greater than others). Size usually gave a good indication of what the sons (who were responsible for building and paying for the cenotaphs) thought of their fathers.

Going back to the Satis, we also came across various tombs for the mothers of kings. These were special because they usually represented the now outlawed practice of the Sati ritual, which basically involves the wife (or wives - all of them) setting themselves on fire at their husband's funeral pyre. Apparently life as a widow was a very terrible one that involves being ostracized by general society and waiting for death. Going the Sati route at least offered promise of a beautiful rebirth.

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From there, we visited a small Jain temple just across the street. For those that don't remember, Jainism is a very old religion that stresses non-violence to all creatures, and spends all of its money building beautiful temples for worship. It was still being added to even though various parts of the structure already appeared quite old. Many statue/temple fragments (mainly statues) from what appeared to be other ruins were mounted in the outer wall surrounding the Jain temple complex. I must confess that I was a little taken aback when I saw our volunteer tour guide within the premises (who had terrible English skills and wanted to practice with us) swat down a spider (!!!???!!!). The good news is that the spider was still alive after it hit the temple floor. I asked a few minutes later i he was Jain, and he said that he was, so I guess he must be a special sort of Jain.

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Afterward, we proceeded to a store that sold Kashmiri shawls, carpets, and other assorted handicrafts. This place had quite a bit of very interesting merchandise…over the course of the time that we spent there, we purchased gifts for my grandmother, grandfather, mother, father and Xiao Ma – Melanie got some nice things for her family as well as herself. We also picked up a nice enamel frame, some cool papier-mâché boxes, and a nice box to store our wedding notes from our guests. After spending 3 hours there, I also made a friend of Ram (our salesperson), who ended up hugging me as we were leaving. I assume this is normal, and that I am not now somehow married to an Udaipuri.

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After shopping, we went over to the City Palace to buy our tickets for the boat tour at 5pm. It was only 4pm, so we figured we had enough time to grab a quick late-lunch/early-dinner at a local restaurant called “Honey Dew.” This was a purely “veg” meal and was rather good, but a little on the slow side. Because of this, we ended up being several minutes late (we had mistakenly thought we could catch the 5:30pm boat) and missing our boat altogether.

Fortunately, there were still some boats running, albeit only for tour groups with prior arrangements. After looking sad (which we really were), acting pathetic and asking for help from the attendant, he took pity upon us and approached a tour group about letting us take a couple seats on their chartered boat. There was a very nice French-Canadian guide taking his tour group from Quebec all around India, and he cheerfully welcomed us to join his tour (but only for the boat tour).

It was thus that we had a very nice boat tour of Lake Pichola (the main lake of the seven in Udaipur). It was very peaceful, and we saw one of the most spectacular sunsets I have witnessed in years. Just the way that the sun turned both the clouds and lake surface into an impressionist tableau in that mysterious time between when the shadows all disappear and when the darkness comes.



For what it is worth, I know I'm not terribly poetic, but it really was a singularly amazing experience.

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We also saw a ton of monkeys just after we stepped off the boat– nothing terribly earth shaking, but still pretty darn cool. We couldn't take very good pictures of them since it was already a little too dark, but these pictures show the best that we were able to manage.

The monkey is the one on the left (I'm totally gonna get it now)

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After that, we went to an art school to look at their “miniature painting” – apparently a specialty of Udaipur. They had some amazing works, although we eventually decided against buying anything due to the high prices. We ended up regretting this later, but that is a story for another day.

The good news was that we did get our luggage back from Jet Airways at the end of the night – nice work, Ashish!

India - Next Stop: Udaipur

Wednesday morning arrived as expected, but we just weren't ready for it. We woke up a bit later than we had planned and ended up rushing to get ready to leave. We had a nice brunch with Sudhir and Aruna, covering varied topics from checking with the Hyatt about cancelling one night’s stay through chai recipes.

Sudhir personally dropped us off at the airport on Wednesday, check-in, and checking our bags all went smoothly. The domestic airport itself was not terribly impressive – it was fairly small, with unfortunate smelling restrooms and a complete lack of anything grand (rather odd for the Capital); however, it was reasonably smoothly run (not exactly efficient, but still adequate).

Slight digression:
It is always interesting to see how men and women are still treated quite differently in many respects. An excellent example is that security checkpoints (including tourist sites as well as airports) always have two separate lines for the genders. The women’s area is always segregated and covered by a screen, whereas the men are left out in the open.

The flight departed a little late, but this was also not an issue since we were probably no more than 30 minutes behind schedule.

The real issue arose upon our arrival in Udaipur. My luggage came through with a chewed up handle, which is fine since I brought along a relatively old suitcase. Melanie’s suitcase, which is a very young-looking 2.5 years old, came through with one of the wheels nearly ripped clean off the bottom-side of the luggage. When we complained about this, the young lady behind the counter offered me two options (1) let them fix it, although it would take more time than we had planned to spend in Udaipur or (2) accept their compensation of 300 Rupees, which was more than enough to get the bag fixed myself in Udaipur. I gently but firmly disagreed with this for the better part of 20 minutes before I finally insisted that they put me in touch with their manager.


He came out quite shortly and, upon hearing the details of our predicament, promised that he could ensure that our bag would at least be usable prior to our departure on Friday evening and perhaps even more thoroughly fixed-up before we left Jaipur. This sounded far better to us, so we agreed to let him come over to our hotel after his shift was over to personally pick up our luggage and take it over to the repair shop, and make sure that it was finished by Thursday night. More on this later.

Once we had reached this point, Melanie and I finally went outside to meet Doulet (our driver) – fully 1 hour after we had arrived. We started to explain our predicament to the driver, and he was very empathetic and offered support and advice. He then asked how long we planned to stay in Udaipur and upon hearing 2-days; he informed us that this was far too short, and that we would be sad to leave when the time came. We quickly saw why he said this as the many beautiful lakes started to come into view as we approached the city.

Over the course of the 40-minute ride from the airport, it came up that Doulet is also a tour guide, and he offered to take us up the mountain that evening to see the Monsoon Palace – apparently a great place in Udaipur to see sunsets. He seemed to be a fairly low-pressure sort of guy (very important to both Melanie and I after Delhi and Agra) so we figured we would give him a shot with a 2 hour excursion - after we had checked in and freshened up a little from the trip.

As we pulled into the driveway of the hotel, my jaw literally dropped when I finally got my first look at the hotel. Before the trip, I had found and booked the Udai Kothi hotel online after significant amounts of research at various opinion sites as well as the two main guidebooks we used for planning this trip (Frommer’s and Lonely Planet). Still, I somehow still expected the reality of the hotel to somehow not live up to the charming but claustrophobic photos and high praise that we consistently found. We were incredibly pleasantly surprised to see that it was in fact even better than it looked and sounded online.


First off, we were greeted with marigold leis as we arrived in the lobby – always a good sign. Then, we were taken quickly and efficiently up to our room, which turned out to be quite spacious and charming. With its four post covered bed, not one but TWO seated reading windows with views of the lake, and a reasonably sized bathtub! It all looked new and clean enough to make you just want to fall down to your knees and worship your preferred deity upon walking into the room.

After giggling for a while and thanking our lucky elephants, we went back downstairs to interview our guide. We hopped into his auto rickshaw and proceeded to get to know him better. Turns out that he has traveled quite a bit within Europe, spent 10 straight months of his life at the Dalai Lama’s temple in northern India, and was in generally a heckuva person. During the ride up and down the hill, Doulet came across as a very nice, reasonable, well-informed, pretty well connected person, so we made arrangements upon our return to the hotel to meet the following day for a full day’s worth of services.

Oh yeah, and the Monsoon Palace itself was kind of run down and looked more like a neglected Tuscan fixer-upper than what we had imagined, which was more along the lines of the gorgeous Indian monsoon-season getaway for the local King (AKA Maharana). Still, the views and the sunset really were truly beautiful, although we would see even more spectacular ones over the next couple of evenings.

After that, we went back to our hotel, where we had arranged to meet up with Angela and Chris again for a nice dinner at the Udai Kothi rooftop restaurant. Again, we had a very pleasant time with them, so we were sure this time to more carefully exchange contact information and we will most likely be staying in touch once we are all back to our respective homes.

As far as the restaurant was concerned, it was up on the rooftop with a very nice view of the lake. The weather just happened to be perfect while we were there, and the lake was full, so we ended up dining here for both of the nights we stayed, and we really enjoyed the food (although I advise against getting the rasmullah for dessert).

Just to get back to the more disappointing aspect of the day, the Jet Airways regional supervisor (Ashish) was supposed to come by our hotel and pick up our luggage this evening while we were at dinner, but this did not happen that night. This left us just 1.5 days to find a solution whilst avoid getting screwed.

India - The Main Event

Taj Mahal

We woke up at 5am today and started getting ready for the trip - sunscreen, fully charged all the batteries for the cameras, took care of business before the road-trip, etc. Afterward, we had a quick breakfast with Sudhir where he gave us some advice that might have been intelligible if we were fully conscious, and then hit the road at ~6:30am with his driver Budprakash.

The Taj Mahal (pronounced taj mah-Hel) is located in a city called Agra, which is about 200km SW of Delhi. We had the option of either taking a train or hiring a car. Both require about the same amount of time, and while the train is significantly cheaper for two people (~US$75 difference in price), the car option is far more flexible. Plus, Sudhir had suggested that we also take some time to go visit a place called Fatehpur Sikri, which is about 40km west of Agra, so the car simply made more sense.

I found the drive itself to be very, very interesting in a lot of ways. Since Delhi is the capital of India (with the closest major airport) and Agra contains the most famous site in India, I had somehow expected a more sanitized journey between the two - presuming that an oft-traveled tourist route would somehow be prettied up for foreign consumption. This turned out to be an incredibly stupid supposition.

First off, the region between the two cities is pretty much entirely rural, and its denizens appeared to be either agrarian or impoverished. This was the first major shock that I had on this trip. Along the way, we saw:

• People piled high and proud on various modes of automobile
• People packed like sardines into an auto rickshaw (basically 10 people in a vehicle that appeared to be designed to carry 3~4)
• People traveling via elephant or camel
• People sleeping on the side of the road
• People squatting by the side of the road

On this last point, I want to go into just a bit more detail. We had initially assumed that the people that we saw squatting by small bodies of stagnant water near the road were simply resting themselves in the wee morning hours. It was only when we saw somebody take advantage of the puddle for sanitary purposes did we realize that they were in fact "dropping the kids off at the pool", so to speak. Once we had undergone this little paradigm shift, it became obvious that most of these people were men, that they were taking care of both numéro un and deux deux, and that there was really no legitimate reason to assume that they would have any better places to do so.

This just pretty much confirmed what I had begun to suspect upon our arrival, which was that this trip to India would be better enjoyed as an adventure than a vacation...particularly when, despite my best efforts, I began to realize that nature was calling for me as well.

But enough with the scatological ramblings, let's get back to the sites and sounds.

About an hour before the Taj Mahal in Sikandra, we passed by an impressive looking structure off to the east, which turned out to be Akbar's Tomb. No, not the one from Life In Hell, but it is spelled the same way. Unfortunately, since we knew that we had a lot of things to do this day, we decided against making an actual stop and instead just drove briefly through the parking lot and took a couple pictures. I would have liked to seen more of this, it just wasn't meant to be. The best that I can offer you is a pretty link to a pretty good PBS website on Akbar's Tomb.

From there, we continued on to Agra proper, finally arriving at around 9:30am. We later found out the reason for this, but the parking lot for all vehicles (tour bus, car, rickshaw, camel) is about 1km away from both the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort. Before Budprakash was even able to park the car, we could feel the tension in the air rising as various enterprising transporters started to gather around the car to offer their services. Budprakash had a brief and what appeared to be a somewhat heated conversation with the group, and then indicated that we should just follow him on foot for a ways. He led us to a small dirt path that led to what was presumably the Taj Mahal - at first we were a bit skittish, but we were more worried about the rest of the touts and there were also various other tourist-looking types going the same way, so we decided to just take his advice and hoof it.

What happened next was irritating as hell, but actually pretty funny when I look back on it. We were accosted the entire 1km walk by guides trying their very best to offer us their services (starting price - 450 Rupees, or ~US$10). We tried various tactics to get rid of them (ignoring them, saying no gently, saying no aggressively, ignoring them again, speeding up, slowing down, stopping to take pictures, etc.), and while we were able to shed most of them, one particularly persistent tout simply would not be denied. His price continued to drop every 50 meters or so and eventually, after he had come nearly the full kilometer with us, we agreed that he could be our guide for 20 Rupees. He then proceeded to give us the old bait-and-switch, but this turned out well since this resulted in us getting a good guide named Rahees – still at the same price (20).

Rahees took us to the entrance and started to tell us (with a pretty darn good command of the English language) about the history of the place and the people involved in its construction. He told us about Shah Jahan and the history of the Mughal emperors. He told us about Mumtaz, the other wives, and their children. He told us how one of the sons (Aurengzeb) "got rid" of the others and rose to power, imprisoning his father in the Agra Fort for the last 7 years of his life with only a view of the Taj Mahal so that he could spend the rest of his life "thinking about his mistake". He told us of how prior to this, Shah Jahan had actually planned to build a black twin to the Taj Mahal across the river from the white one, but never got around to it thanks to the Big-Pious-A. He rounded these details out with tidbits about the inlay work in the main structure, explanations about the style of architecture, observations about the 4 towers (they lean away from the main structure so as not to damage it should they fall), and informed us that the reason the building is yellowish instead of its original stark white was due to pollution, causing the Indian government to ban all traffic and factory presence within 1km of the grounds.

While he was telling us all of this, we had the surreal experience of actually walking around a truly amazing place. Nothing that I had seen or read about it really prepared me for the experience of actually being there. The epic sense of beauty, space and symmetry that effuses every molecule of the place was simply breathtaking. Visiting the Taj Mahal has been one of my life's goals, and here I was standing - right in front of it, about to step inside!

As we walked up past the reflecting pools and approached the main structure, we continued to be blown away by the experience of it all. It turns out to be much larger than you would think from the pictures that you come across. It is also far more impressive in person due to all of the fine detail that went into the design. We also happened to luck into a perfect day - clear blue skies and comfortable weather. This was more like it!

Before you can ascend the dais and go into the main structure, it is necessary for all people to remove their shoes. This led to another unexpected aspect of the Taj Mahal that you don't typically read about in travel guides: the smell inside. I can only guess what could cause human feet to reach that level of funklitude, but it hits you like a wall as you cross the threshold and go inside. I can only hope that the memory of the awful/offal smell will fade in time, leaving me with a purer memory of the inside of the place, but for now it remains...

We went back outside, breathed the glorious air again, and then proceeded to walk the grounds a bit. This was also quite fun since the grounds are apparently occupied by monkeys in the early hours of the day and squirrels for the rest of the time the sun is up. We didn't get to see any monkeys, but the squirrels were everywhere. Melanie again went gaga over these cute little critters, which are smaller and admittedly cuter than their American cousins. We also got to see the Taj Mahal version of a lawnmower, which is essentially a spinning scythe with a collection basket pulled behind two cows. The best part is that the process is self sustaining since the cows get to eat the fruit of their labors, which results in fertilizer for the grass. Truly a self-sustaining system.

For the last part of the tour, we stopped off in a gift shop where the supposed descendants of the family that did the original inlay work were still plying their trade for souvenirs. Rahees was obviously on commission, so we stayed long enough for him to get at least a little $$, paid him his 20Rp + a decent tip, and then parted ways - heading back to the car. Again we were accosted by various rickshaw drivers offering us a ride back to the parking lot (price went from 150 Rp down to 5Rp), but we decided to just walk back down the path. We realized at this point that nothing looked familiar since we had flown by it all the first time as we were trying to escape the guide earlier in the day. It was a good thing that we had given Rahees a good tip since he happened to be sitting outside and watching us as we started off in the wrong direction - he called out to us and told us the actual way back, and so we went.

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Fatehpur Sikri

Afterward, we headed over to Fatehpur Sikri. The road there is narrow 2-lane road, and it was slightly reminiscent of the car ride over to Batina, Croatia (passing, overtaking, interesting smells) but far more destitute and far more cows. It was similar to the drive down to Agra, except the view was nicer, there were fewer people squatting, and we got to see these bizarrely stacked piles of dung, sometimes up to 2m tall.

If you look up towards the top of the archway, you will see a bunch of very large, fungus looking things. These are actually active beehives. I'm guessing that these are still here because (a) they look fascinating in both their size and shape and (b) there weren't a whole lot of volunteers for this particular clean up duty.

When we arrived, we managed to get a nice enough guide named David. He gave us adequate information, but I think we were still too close to Agra to get truly good service.


While this place was also fascinating, the day was starting to wear us down, so we only stayed a couple of hours, took a few pictures, and then headed on home after a quick pitstop at David's family's gift shop.

I'd like to digress again and rant a bit on the dichotomy that is India. On one hand, this is a country rich in culture, regal majesty, architecture, music, etc. On the other, it is insanley impoverished and underdeveloped: poopers by the side of the road, rail thin people of all ages, a belief in reincarnation, but we often saw people acting with some cruelty to animals, tourists being overwhelmed with people offering trinkets, baubles, guided tours, photographs, etc.

Anyway...

We went back to the Sabharwal residence and had a nice late dinner with Sudhir and Aruna. Sudhir gave us the nicer back bedroom for our last night in Delhi, and he even went so far as to invite us back for a free night at his place during the final leg of our trip before we return to Taiwan! Sudhir and Aruna have become increasingly parental over the course of our time spent here, but I am afraid that after 8 days in India, we will really need to stay in a cushy hotel rather than their home. They are a lovely couple, so this is no slight to them - just a supposition about the way we'll feel in a week.

India - Shopping Day

We woke up fairly late on Monday, and only staggered out into the common area around 10am. We ended up chatting with Sudhir for a couple hours, and he regaled us with entertaining stories about his family and his reasoning for wanting to rent out rooms (both sons are married and gone, and his daughter is busy getting her MBA). He and Aruna (his wife) helped us work out our itinerary for the day, and he made sure that both Melanie and I were taken care of.

Interestingly, we found out that he owns a 150-store shopping center named after his family on a street that is also named after his family. We mentioned that we wanted to buy the dancing Siva statue, and he told us not to worry about it for now, and that he would take care of us. I also wanted to note that Sudhir and Aruna were already well dressed and obviously ready to head out someplace before we woke (found out later it was 2 weddings on this auspicious day), but they waited for us so that they could get to know us better, as well as help us to plan our day…super nice. The Sabharwals were Definitely not Carol Swift (more on this someday).

We hired his driver for the day, and proceeded to strike out into Delhi to do some shopping. The first place we went was called GK-I, which is a small shopping center that is somehow very well known and apparently a Mecca for visiting white people in India.

First, we had lunch at Zaffrons, which is a great rooftop Indian restaurant. From there, we spent nearly 4 hours in this crazy store called Fabindia. There were 3-4 different branches of Fabindia shops contained in GK-I, each selling different wares. I am not really sure how best to describe it, so I will just say that it seems to carry many fairly high quality textile products manufactured in India. They sell kurtas, shirts, dupattas, shawls, saris, tablecloths, linens, etc., and the stuff is both neat and affordable. I am still not entirely sure how we blew 4 hours there, but we did end up with a whole bunch of neat stuff, both for us as well as presents, so it was definitely worthwhile.

We had just enough time to head over to the Lahore Music House, where I was able to pick up a gorgeous sitar and a set of stunning tablas for a remarkably cheap price. I LOVE THEM. The other cool thing is that Sudhir actually helped us to negotiate (by phone) the rate down by another ~3000 Rupees AFTER I had already gotten as low as I could go. I will post pictures of both at some point in the future. We then did a rather remarkable job loading everything into the Tata Indicar (about the size of a Ford Focus) and headed on back to the Sabharwal household.

On the way back, we saw our first wedding, which was quite an interesting affair. I was not able to get the camera out in time, but we did see several more over the next week, so I will post pictures of some of these a little later.

When we arrived, Sudhir was again waiting for us, this time dressed nicely for what must have been a more western wedding. He hooked us up with SIM card with an Indian mobile number (rented for the week for ~US$11), gave us further details about our upcoming Agra excursion, and gave (that’s right – gave) us the dancing deity statues (apparently called “Nataraj”). I have to say that our host felt more like Uncle Sudhir than Mr. Sabharwal.

We then all headed out, with Melanie and I going to a restaurant called Dumpukht (also at the Sheraton) for our dinner While this was a higher end dining experience, it frankly was not nearly as charming or tasty as Bukhara – still, it was certainly an excellent meal. We were seated by the piano/tabla duet, playing beautiful and evocatively foreign music.

Speaking of foreign, this was also the first time that we experienced what turned out to be a common occurrence in Indian dining - precious metal foil on the food. I am not altogether sure if this is good for me, let alone whether or not it really makes sense to actually eat gold and silver in the first place, but it didn't seem to have any adverse effects. This just goes to show that it's possible to pimp darn near everything these days.

We then went back to the B&B and chatted with Sudhir and Aruna for a little longer before going to bed. They gave us the finer details for our Tuesday trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which really made both of us very excited since we were GOING TO SEE THE FREAKING TAJ MAHAL!!!

India - Further Impressions on the Second Day (Slight Panic)

We actually managed to sleep quite soundly on the very comfortable bed provided in the guest room by our hosts, the Sabharwals. We eventually managed to crawl out of bed around 10:30am and staggered out of the bedroom around 10:45am. At this point (after we noticed the temple right across the street), we met the other couple staying at the Sabharwal residence – Angela and Chris – a nice young couple from Washington D.C. Sudhir, our very entertaining host introduced us to them and then he and his wife Aruna proceeded to finish discussing their itinerary for the day, which coincidentally enough consisted of many of the same points of interest that we were thinking of visiting.

Just as Angela and Chris went back to their room to finish getting ready for their day out on the town, Sudhir leaned over and hinted that since our agenda was much the same as theirs, that perhaps we should just piggy-back our day onto theirs and go out on the town as a foursome. When they came back to the room, we brought it up and they went for it, so we quickly finished getting ready and set out for a day around Delhi.

It turns out that one of the many services offered by the Sabharwals is a driver that will take you wherever you wish to go over the course of an entire day for about US$40. This turned out to be fantastic since we now had somebody that we could trust taking us directly to our points of interest and then staying with the car (and our stuff) whilst we wandered around.

Our first stop was for lunch at a relatively old restaurant called Karim’s, which happens to be very close to India’s largest mosque – Jamma Masjid. It was here when we first started to get to know our travel companions, as well as started to get to know Indian cuisine. We enjoyed a wonderful mean of Chicken Burra, Butter Chicken, and Palak Paneer, washed down with a glass of Pepsi (not traditional, but a relatively safe option considering what we had heard about drinking the water).

After lunch, we wandered outside and made our way over to Jamma Masjid. This was a very interesting trip in that (a) it was the first time that any of us had ever been to a mosque and (b) the architecture and ambience was very unique. To start, we had to take off our shoes before we were allowed to enter, and we were encouraged to check in our shoes with the young men sitting at the entrance. Although we were a little concerned about the safety of our footwear, there is a strange trust that arises from being in India outside of a mosque, so we went for it. We were also charged a nominal fee of about 200 rupee, but this was quoted in our guides as the standard rate, so we felt we were getting a good deal. From there, we entered the mosque and soak up the ambience.

The mosque had a large courtyard in front of a magnificent structure, inside of which we were not allowed. The courtyard had people sitting about in various states of repose – unusually enough, those that chose to lie down were accosted by what appeared to be guards of some sort sporting wooden sticks, which they used to literally poke those that were lying down. There were also several large bowls towards the center of the courtyard along with a large yellowish area in the very middle of the courtyard. It turns out that the yellowish area was birdseed, which we presumed were there to distract the legion of pigeons that were hanging out on the minarets of the mosque. This was a little disturbing since we were walking around either barefoot or in socks, but we got over that out of necessity.

From there, we proceed to take a rickshaw ride around Old Delhi, which included parts of Chandni Chowk, a remarkably cute and exquisite Jain temple, and the Red Fort. This was a fascinating and scintillating ride, full of near misses with pedestrians, a few shops paying our rickshaw pilots commissions for visiting customers, and a nice leisurely walk around the Red Fort grounds, which were hauntingly similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing. At the end of the three hour tour (a three hour tour), we paid our drivers roughly 500 rupees (300 for the ride and 200 for the tip – a bit of a rip off), we got back into our vehicle and headed over to Akshardham to poke around for a little while.

Akshardham is a ridiculously beautiful example of neo-classical Indian architecture, and a remarkably successful confluence of old Indian culture with modern technology. While I have yet to figure out exactly whom this glorious tribute was built for, I am glad to have visited it – albeit only for about an hour. When we get back to Taiwan, I want to do more research on this place that will inevitably find its way into the top ten lists of the next edition of every single India guidebooks from now on. For a glimpse of what it looks like, I suggest doing an image search under either Google or Yahoo...cameras were not allowed on the site...

From here, we went back to the B&B to freshen up a bit before dinner. It was then that I finally had a chance to start getting to know Sudhir a little better, and I am very grateful for this opportunity. Sudhir is nothing less than a spectacular host. He went out of his way to make sure that we felt comfortable, secure, and well taken care of. He made sure that our restaurant reservations were all in order, automatically pushed out our reservation when it became obvious that we would not be able to make it, ensured that Chris (AKA Eric) and I were sufficiently liquored up before hitting the road, and gave us a bit more information about his family.

From there, we went over to the Maurya Sheraton, located in the Diplomatic Enclave, for dinner at a restaurant called Bukhara. This was a restaurant recommended to me by Sid Agrawal, and also turned out to be a restaurant that Sudhib suggested to his guests when they wanted a fine dining experience.


This place was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!! While the ambience left something to be desired (not bad, but nothing interesting), the food was nothing short of life changing. First of all, silverware is not provided, which means that you have no choice but to get at least a little feral and eat with your hands. This is not an issue since all of the food is custom made for this. We ordered the Sikandori Raan, which is a beautifully crusted “whole leg of spring lamb marinated in malt vinegar, cinnamon, and black cumin, first braised in the marinade and then finished in the tandoor”. We also enjoyed an amazing chicken curry dish (murgh something or other) – a dish so delicious that you could coaxed into believing that God (or Allah or Brahma or Buddha) is back in the kitchen. The Paneer Tikka and the butter naan were both good, but just not on the same plane as the other two dishes. We topped it off with an Argentinean Malbec from Terrazas, which just completed the experience. I just cannot say enough good things about this whole dining experience, so I will just leave you with the comment that the food served this evening is easily on my list of the top ten meals I have ever had in my life…

Chris and Angela turned out to be such good company that we have made arrangements to meet them in Udaipur on Wednesday to enjoy at least one more meal before our paths diverge for good (at least on this trip) when they head down to southern India.



That’s about it for Day 2. Melanie and I are both so exhausted from running around all day long (and gorging ourselves on Indian fine dining) that I simply cannot keep my eyes open any longer…