2009-03-25

I am going to do again what most blogs with a lot of following seldom do. Write a long ass post. Please bear with me.

Delhi
we got out of the airport at 2AM and it was foggy. I felt like kababs and we decided to drive down to kumsum at Nizamuddin. Munish drove expertly in near zero visibility conditions with dada navigating. It was a harrowing experience and Pramida kept reprimanding me for making them drive to Nizamuddin. But the kababs were worth it.
The same morning we left for Agra. For an international destination, the Taj has one of the worst approach roads. Dirty with trash and dung all over. It was a Saturday and it was like a bloody circus. As soon as we got out of the car the touts started harassing us. The luggage check was a small room with hundreds of people jostling to get in to retrieve their wires etc. A small fight broke and there could have been a stampede if not for the cop who kept taking aim at people with his long staff. Because of the fog we had to wait for a while to be able to see the Grand structure.No doubt it is beautiful but I would not recommend it to anyone. Please go to Humayun’s tomb which has the same design but is built with red sandstone. when we finally got out of the Taj people started harassing us to get into the meena bazaar to buy crap. We escaped and quickly went on our way to Fatehpur Sikri.
The Buland Darwaza is an imposing gate and delivers what it promises from the outside. A peaceful courtyard with Salim Chisti’s dargah and the mosque, all very unreal in the evening winter light. Come here with some time in your hands so you can sit and enjoy the beautiful space.
We spent the next few days hanging with friends. The first stop was Delhi Haat where we ate momos and kashmiri khana which included goshtaba, rishta and rogan josh. Then we went to Sarojini and had badam milk and jalebis while the girls shopped. Dinner was at Karims where we ate excellent barra kababs and also picked up boti kababs for later from a kababwalah in the street outside the mosque. I recommend Nizamuddin to all you foodies out there. We used to bring kababs from here and biryani from tefla’s canteen (JNU) for most of our college parties.
The next day we started for Ranthambore in Rajasthan. On our way, dada and Dev narrated the story of a movie called Khooni Darinda, From what I hear, it is worth a rent!

Ranthambore conjures up images of jungles, lost treasures in dilapidated forts and adventure. They place lived up to its hype but the tigers decided to sleep in. We did see plenty of monkeys, Sambars, Neelgais(antelopes), T-bills and other birds. We saw the pug marks as expected but not the tiger. Went to the fort later that evening which is right by the national park and from the top could see the cantors and jeeps going around. We left for Bundi the same evening and made a pit stop at Indragarh. The samosas were delicious with the samosas smashed and chutneys poured into them. We also tried the sev curry which supposedly is a specialty from Gujarat and Rajasthan. Picked up a few guavas which were a little raw but sweet. On our way to Bundi from Indragarh we saw a few wild animals on the road. One point we slowed down for a neelgai but the poor thing got scared when Pramida let out a yelp not realizing that the animal was so close.
Our first stop was at a guesthouse which was run by an old guy. His living quarters was full of old pictures of men in royal uniforms. They are probably aristocrats. We decided not to stay there because the pots didn’t have seats and the girls were uncomfortable. Instead we went to the neighboring guest house run by a family. The kids were very agreeable and helped their parents with cooking, serving us food etc. all while studying for tests. We were not really easy guests making demands on the poor folk. But they really looked after us well. Make sure you stay here if you go to Bundi.
The palace in Bundi is really beautiful. It is still owned by Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji and a huge section of the palace is closed for public. But the diwan-e aam and the offices and a few sections presumably the apartments for minor queens were enough to get a general idea of the architecture and the interiors of the palace. The toilets were awesome. We were trying hard to figure out what the holes were for!
The Palace was empty apart from the monkeys who sat on the throne which for humans was off-limits. Then we went up to see the Taragarh fort.
The fort is beautiful and there were hardly any people. Just another couple apart from our gang. The whole place was covered with shrubbery and the light was fading. There are old palaces and the traditional Rajasthani wells inside. The interiors were all very intricate. It was a maze and there were places where I thought I was lost. Stuff my childhood dreams were made of. Just needed the treasure map.
That evening we went to this place which looked like the lounges in Goa, Pushkar and other places where tourists get trashed and trip on weird looking psychedelic art on the walls and lay down on the deewans and listen to techno. We were not trashed so we really didn’t like it because they took about 2 hours to get our food. Mind you, it is extremely difficult getting non-vegetarian food in the town and only a few places serve alcohol. The food was lousy and we ended up disturbing our hosts and made them cook for us again.

The Rock Art of the ancients
Mr. Kukki, the unofficial Resident archaeologist of Bundi who discovered all the rock paintings took us on a tour of one section of his discoveries. There were scenes of men hunting, animals, people and other weird stuff like a man flying on a bird all drawn using locally available volcanic rock. There are about 55 sites that he discovered in the last 14 years and makes a living by taking people to these sites. There are others in the town who have caught on and have similar tours but this guy has dedicated his life to this. If you ever go, please make sure you use his services. He is interesting, a little rigid. He will take you to places that he thinks you might enjoy like waterfalls, small temples when all you want to do is look at the art. Make sure you tell him that you just want to see the rock art if you want to make the most of your time there.
On our way there, a bunch of scamsters on bikes tried their level best to sell us some fake gold. Don’t stop for these people. There have been instances of grand theft. The region has a tribe which prides itself for producing great tricksters and even have a roadside eatery named after ‘scam’.
Mr. Kukki has an awesome collection of pre-historic artifacts. He has stuff from paleolithic, chalcolithic, microlithic and mesolithic eras. He has arrow heads, stone tools, jewellery, coins and weapons. He lets you touch them and it is an entirely different feeling when you are not just peering at them from behind a glass pane.
For all you Pre-Independence Raj time literature enthusiasts , Bundi is where Rudyard Kipling stayed and wrote parts of KIM and it is believed that the Taragarh fort served as an inspiration for the monkey king’s fort in the Jungle Book.

Delhi
Back in Delhi we spent a lot of time hanging out with friends. We went to a place in GK for dinner and drinks and had a great time. The next day we went to Chandni Chowk since Pramida wanted to go back for Jalebis there. We went on a binge and ate whatever we could lay our hands on. Then went to Ballimaran to eat kababs and ate at Karims and then at different stalls that line up Jama Masjid’s Gate number 1. After stuffing ourselves with kabab we took a quick tour of Meena bazar, my first time here and I was quite surprised by the deals. There were suitcases going for pennies.
On that note let me give this a rest.