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tomandharriet · 5 years

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Farewell for now, India

A night sleeping under the desert stars was always going to be a tough act to follow, so we gave the honour to another night bus and headed to Udaipur, ‘The City of Lakes’. Udaipur is a truly beautiful city, with stunning architecture, palaces, hilltop vistas and old havelis everywhere you look. We decided that it was an apt place to up our accommodation budget and treated ourselves to a stay in a haveli hotel, complete with rooftop pool. If Varanasi is the last place anybody should start their time in India, Udaipur has to be a strong candidate to be one of the first. It has a lovely cafe culture and at times almost felt European. It’s lakes offer some great cycling routes and one is even home to an observatory!

We decided to put a couple of very old bikes to the test and they just about got us to a palace at the top of a large hill on the outskirts of Udaipur. It became apparent to us on the climb that cycling up the hill isn’t the usually done thing and as more and more locals cheered us on or just looked at us in amazement, we had no option but forget about the fact our bikes were basically falling apart and push on to the summit, where a stunning view and a gaggle of monkeys awaited us.

Apart from all the food, cafes and an excellent cookery class which will of course be covered later, we spent the rest of our time wondering around the beautiful streets or chilling back at our hotel, where we (Tom) found out the hard way that the rooftop pool, which looked so inviting in the warm but deceptive winter sun, was infact unheated! We finished our time in Udaipur with a quick tour around the main city palace. On its own we’re sure it would be pretty spectacular, but off the back of all the other forts and palaces in Rajasthan, a form of fort fatigue was setting in and we didn’t give it the time it likely deserved.

Now winding our way back to Jaipur with just a few final days left in India, we bypassed Chittorgarh, famous for.. it’s fort, opting instead to visit lesser known Bundi, off the back of recommendations from Ciarán and a guy we met in Varanasi. Being an old town in Rajasthan, Bundi does of course have its own palaces and forts, but the interesting thing here was that Bundi is significantly less touristy compared to the other places we visited in Rajasthan and much of it had been neglected as a result. When entering the fort, which was long since abandoned by the last maharajah, we were offered two options, to take either a guide or a stick, as current inhabitants are monkeys and they don’t take too kindly to visitors! After a brief demonstration, we opted for the stick and set off on what turned into a 5 hour exploration of the eerily quiet palace and overgrown fort ruins. The whole experience was actually far more interesting than walking around the well maintained counterparts found in more popular parts of Rajasthan (although Jodhpur still holds the top spot in our eyes!).

Bundi has an abundance of Stepwells. A common feature in most the places we visited, but nowhere more spectacular than here. Originally used for bathing and as a source of water, many are now neglected and in Bundi’s case, dry as a result of a mini drought starting to effect the areas water levels. Our favourite stepwell really encapsulated what we saw so frequently in India, beauty and disorder combined. With a seemingly endless network of steps, the design of this stepwell in particular was stunning. But it has also fallen into disrepair and covered with what at first glance looked like lots of rubbish. We were later informed by a local that this was Pooja, or offerings to the Gods, often consisting of picture frames, flowers and candles which cannot be cleaned up or removed.

After spending the past few days in some of India’s most touristy areas, it was really nice to spend some final time back in a part of India that wasn’t set up for visitors. One of our favourite things about our time in India was the level of interest shown by locals to our visit. Always intrigued to know what we think of their town or country. In fact we (mostly Harriet and her blonde hair) caused quite a stir everywhere we walked in Bundi and frequently found children flocking around us, fascinated by our cameras and amazed to see photos of themselves.

Bundi was also home to one of our favourite accommodations of the trip, Dev Nivas Heritage Hotel, a beautiful 400 year old Haveli with lovely staff and simple but delicious food. It also had a rooftop for kite flying, something which seemingly every child in Bundi practiced in the setting sun, in preparation for their upcoming kite festival. Naturally we had to give it a go, until it shared the fate of most kites, entangled in electricity cables, a common sight at this time of year!

After one final night bus, we reached Jaipur, our last stop in India. We knew how much we would miss the food, so spent a lot of our time here stuffing our faces on walking tours and at restaurants. Although not explicitly on a food tour, our guide on the first tour soon realised we were most interested in sampling the best Jaipur had to offer and he was happy to oblige (more on that to follow!). Between food spots, we learnt about some of Jaipur’s other features, such as Makrana marble, one of Rajasthan’s proudest exports - used to build the Taj Mahal, along with many other monuments. We found time to visit some final temples, forts and palaces, the most striking being the Amber Palace. However, it wasn’t enough to topple our front runner, Jodhpur’s Mehrangarh fort, which will likely cite our blog on next years pamphlet. We are delighted to announce that Jaipur did offer us a winner for the best tuk tuk favour stop. Just as it looked like Agra’s embroidery shop would take the crown, on our last afternoon, our driver passionately pitched a nearby block printing shop. As he had been our driver for the whole day, we decided to go along with it and were pleasantly surprised! Having studied similar methods during her art foundation course, the printing was of great interest to Harriet. The quality of their work was also really nice, so we left with a table cloth and matching napkins to remember Rajasthan by.

Food

Something that was very popular in Udaipur that Harriet got to enjoy a few times for breakfast was the aloo paratha. Made fresh to order it was a roti dough stuffed with spiced potato mash, flattened, fried in ghee and served fresh and warm. The dish would normally be accompanied with a tangy plain yoghurt and lime pickle or tomato chutney. A very comforting dish, that was such a great and simple meal to start the day with.

There was a clear highlight for us when it came to the food in Udaipur (and probably even India) and that was our brilliant Indian cookery class with Shashi. The story behind her cookery business was so inspirational we couldn’t help but feel in absolute awe of her ongoing determination. Shashi tragically lost her husband 20 years ago with three young children to look after and limited to only being able to work from her home due to being a woman in her religion. Shashi’s strength was in her cooking and slowly with support of friends, family and passing travellers she built up her company and reputation from nothing. We lost count of the number of dishes we cooked in the class. Everything from curries, chutneys, sweet and savoury breads to the most delicious chai we have tasted all trip. With the help of Shashi and her son and alongside a really lovely South African family we were continuously helping, watching and tasting for over 4 hours! By the time we sat down to our banquet of food we were already pretty stuffed but wow was it delicious. We cannot wait to start cooking some of these dishes when we get home.

One of the most interesting things we learnt on the course was that for pretty much all curry dishes they use a base sauce that they call “magic sauce”. Made using chopped garlic, chillies, ginger, pulped tomato and a combination of spices you can then freeze to use when you wish. You would think everything would end up tasting the same but that really isn’t the case. Just a really great way to add instant flavour to your curry.

We spent our time in Jaipur cramming in as many Indian snacks and sweets as our stomachs could handle. This was only accentuated during our brilliant walking tour of Jaipur, which just turned into more of a food tour of the city. Our guide lead us to the back streets of the city where they made rabri on mass for local restaurants. We saw deliciously light and fluffy naans being skilfully placed and baked inside a tandoori oven, mustard oil being made from a machine that looked like it had been running none stop for the last 100 years (probably because it had), the chilli wholesaler who could barely move in his shop for all the mountains of dried chillies and tumeric being ground up covering the entire shop (and workers) in the bright yellow spice.

However, our favourite meal in Jaipur was the poha we had for our final breakfast in India. This felt appropriate given it was one of our first meals in India, eating it before climbing the Kalavantin Durg. We do talk about this in our first blog post but for those who want a little reminder it’s a breakfast dish commonly found in the North of India. Made using flat rice, dry fried with a combination of spices and served with chopped red onion, chillies, nuts, pomegranates and coriander. Sweet and spicy with all the textures, such a uniquely brilliant dish.

India ‘Outro’

And so here we are, at the end of an era. The blog has finally reached the end of India! We’re not quite sure whether this, or the moment we actually left India is more of an emotional landmark for us. But seriously, India has a firm place in both our hearts and our renowned ‘top 5’ lists. How somewhere can be so vast, yet so warm, friendly and of course, unique, is staggering. You could spend your whole life in India and still be surprised and amazed everyday, by what it has to offer. We’ll remember it for the people, the food, the chai, the smells (good and bad) and then for the food again. Leaving India brought on a feeling that neither of us had felt before. But then we’d never spent 2 months in another country before and you learn and adjust a lot in that amount of time to the customs and way of life - and there’s so much to love about the way Indians go about their lives. We’re still sorting through thousands of photos we took during our stay, but nothing we can show or tell you about India will really do it justice until you’ve been there to find out for yourselves. And we’ll definitely be going back for more.. as it turns out sooner than we thought, back to Mumbai, albeit very briefly, for a stopover on our flight home!

Travel Jukebox - ‘Blood’ by Rhye

With the amount of night buses we took during this section of India, it’s fitting that we talk about an album recommended specifically for those occasions. Rhye’s second album, Blood, was picked by Xanthe and her suggested occasion, as a night bus album, is a perfect one.

Put simply, Rhye’s music is a treat for your ears. Beautifully soothing doesn’t go far enough. As with their first album, Woman, the album is brilliantly paced, with some excellent instrumentals supporting what is Rhye’s obvious USP, the vocal. We’re not going to share the fact that Xanthe gave us when recommending the album, because we think that it’s better you listen to some of Rhye’s music first and then do a little research into them. You’ll discover the fact pretty quickly, and then when you know, you’ve got to go and listen to the album all over again. We still can’t quite believe it’s true!

TLDR; Rajasthan gave us the perfect send off from India and could be the perfect starting point for you!

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