Mandawa and Bikaner

Right now we’re on our way to a village in the desert just past Jaisalmer with our driver, Chacha. We’re enjoying the ride so far and have seen many interesting things. First though, we’d like to write about Chacha.

A brief description about Chacha

Chacha is our driver, whose real name is Vinod, however we call him Chacha because it means uncle in Hindi. We call him this because he looks after us as if we’re his own kids and he also takes us to places that won’t’ rip us off. For example, he just took us to an expensive restaurant only to use their clean toilets and then he took us to a much cheaper restaurant for lunch because he didn’t want us to spend over 1000 Rs for lunch when we could spend just 320 Rs for two people at this cheaper restaurant. The owner of the expensive restaurant would have paid Chacha for taking us there but Chacha does not feel it’s right to bring tourists to such places.

Chacha is maybe around 60 years old, and is a short man with a big heart. He also has a wife, two sons, a daughter-in-law and a granddaughter who is two years old. In addition, he works in an office in New Delhi with his sons to arrange a taxi service (I think). A few other notable things are that he requires a cup of tea at least every three hours when he’s driving, smokes a cigarette about every hour when driving, and has the same lord Krishna figure on the dashboard of every car that he’s driven.

I don’t think we could have asked for a better driver to take us through the beautiful state of Rajasthan. We’re already done with four day of the tour and we can’t wait to see what the next 14 will bring!

One day in Mandawa

Mandawa is more like a village but has a bunch of havelis (old big houses with intricate paintings) from the 1800s or so.  We didn’t do much in Mandawa except take a one-hour tour of the village, saw a short puppet show, and bought fruit for dinner because we weren’t that hungry. The hotel we stayed in was also quite nice with beautiful paintings.

Puppet show in the hotel

 

Two days in Bikaner

We also had a relaxing time in Bikaner where we saw the market area, which was quite lively and had an interesting spice market. The hotel we stayed in was also quite nice to our standards and had a sort of courtyard in the center where we had dinner at night which was also nice.

On the second day in Bikaner, we drove probably an hour away to a temple that worshiped rats specifically. We didn’t know it was a rat temple until we got there and so we were both a little nervous about rats running around in the temple. While it wasn’t as bad as we expected, we were still creeped out by the rats and left after a short time. We then had a cup of tea and Chacha went somewhere to get us a USB drive with 800 (I think) Indian songs that only cost us 500 Rs (<$10). We were super stoked about this and this made the uncomfortable rat temple experience worth the drive out there. We’ve been listening to the music ever since and it’s been awesome.

Inside the rat temple

Outside the rat temple

 

We then went to the Bikaner fort which was much larger and more extravagant than we expected. There were so many intricate paintings and architecture features and we also enjoyed seeing this fort more than we expected.

 

Later at the hotel, we saw two guys who we even saw in New Delhi and decided to talk to them. We found out that they’re also on the same Rajasthan tour as us with the same company but they’re traveling for a month. They’re 21 and 23 from Portland and seem to be nice guys. It was nice to have dinner with them and then to our surprise, we ended up having a few beers with both of our drivers. The night ended in a great way with many great jokes and laughter.

Our Journey to Jaisalmer

This morning we had left Bikaner at 10am for our six hour drive through the desert to Jaisalmer. The desert is not the stereotypical one you may be picturing, with dunes and such; but rather has many short, dried grasses and trees. As well, there are many wide open areas consisting of shepherds with their large herds of goats and sheep, random cattle and even some camels!

Another interesting aspect about this drive is that we weren’t really expecting was witnessing the hundreds of people who are making their way to a temple that is about 100km from Jaisalmer. Every year, Hindus will participate in this pilgrimage from their home all the way to this temple. Chacha even said people will walk about 20-30km per day for about a month until they reach their destination!

We noticed many people carrying various types of colorful flags, but the commonality between them all was a picture of two feet (which I’m guessing represents their pilgrimage). All along the highway were random tents set up that either had water, tea or maybe even small amounts of food provided for the large amount of people making their way to the temple. It seems as though this event is not just a major annual event religious wise, but also very communal. Many who were walking were alone, but most were at least with one other person; sometimes even in big groups!

The closer we drove to where the Temple was located, the more people we saw. Something else that was also interesting that Chacha had mentioned to us was that people would remove their shoes about 10-20km away from the temple; and I was not expecting to see the massive pile of shoes that were there in addition to being scattered all along the road. Once people return from the temple, they put on a new pair of shoes. One last note, after seeing the pile of shoes we also saw a few people do a prayer (I think) where they would kneel to the ground, lay flat on their belly and then stand up.

Overall

We’ve had a great journey in India so far and we’re really looking forward to tonight. Once we get to the village we’ll be riding camels for about two hours, watching the sunset, seeing a dance performance and then sleeping under the stars in the desert. Hopefully it’s awesome!

Caroline’s Song of the Day

21-Aug Little Secrets by Passion Pit

22-Aug Cats and Dogs by the Head and the Heart

23-Aug Chloe by Grouplove