India Travel Journal 8: Breakdancing Kids and Breathtaking Views

Sorry for the delay in posting this–recent life in Spain has been a teeny bit chaotic (not too surprising after all that travel!) so I’ve been trying to focus on “real” life.  Now, though, here’s a look back at a day’s excursions during my March trip to India!

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Sunday, March 25, 2012

The past couple days have been pretty spectacular—and not just for the photo ops.

Yesterday I woke up late and started off with a midday walk around the neighborhood.  The area around this guesthouse in Udaipur has a quiet, suburban feel—none of the chaos of downtown Mumbai.  Some people stared, others introduced themselves, and others wordlessly requested that I take photos of them (as usual, I ever so kindly obliged).

Then, after a quick stop at the guesthouse, I caught a ride with S over to the youth center for an afternoon of wonderful photo time with the kids.  They’re always so excited to be in front of the camera!  The posed antics were hilarious, but I think the photos became a bit more interesting once they stopped doing headstands and breakdancing for the camera (not even kidding—see below) and started just being themselves.

After the center we stopped for some chai at the restaurant by the lake.  S had to go pick up another guest pretty soon after that, but somehow he still made time to take a pit stop right next to some other gorgeous views (solely so that I could hop out of the car and take pictures).  So, these are the views from a road that cuts through Fateh Sagar lake…  Ridiculous(ly amazing), right?

That night I joined S and the new guest, J, for a meal at another beautiful Udaipur restaurant.  We had some interesting conversations—the new guest is a bit older than me and has fit in work in Dubai and travel in Thailand during the past few years.

We all spent a bit more time together today.  S dropped J and I off at some local gardens, and we spent the morning wandering around there.  The gardens were beautiful, but the men creepy as ever.  When a couple guys started (very obviously!) taking video of us on their phones as we relaxed on a shady bench, we got up and moved on to another monument site.

While the next monument was simply a not-too-photogenic statue with minimal English explanation available, this was the amazing view from the surrounding terrace.

When S picked us up, we headed over to do some pharmacy shopping, which went smoothly until a random Indian guy tried to edge in front of us in the register queue.  Fortunately, neither of us were going to put up with that—and after we closed ranks and glared at him intermittently for a few minutes, he gave up and went to try to cut into another queue.

We finished off the day with a trip to Tiger Lake, a beautiful spot well outside the city center.  Despite a bit of local color (some men who were very determined to take pictures with us—as in, who really wanted to stand close enough to a white woman that they’d be able to cop a feel) the outing really was a success.  It’s also just an amazing privilege to be able to access sites like that one which you can only really reach by car!

Here are some photos from the outing:

Now I’m actually writing from a new hostel, which I switched to solely because I was getting concerned that I wouldn’t end up making the time to explore this city’s touristy monuments and old city.  The “real life” accessible from the guesthouse was incredible, but Udaipur originally hit the top of my list of India destinations because Monsoon Palace and the nearby Old City are so beautiful—I would hate to miss those because I got caught up in other things.

Regardless, I’ll still be heading back to the youth education center tomorrow afternoon to play with/photograph the kids one more time…and of course, since I am me, I’m already contemplating how I can come back here in the next couple years to embark on a large scale photo project in cooperation with the education center.

In the morning tomorrow, though….the City Palace!  (Thus, going to sleep now!  Really, I am!)

India Travel Journal 7: Riding on motorcycles with boys

March 23, 2012

This morning the owner of the guest house, S, drove me and J (another girl from the hostel) into the city center.  We both wanted to get some real shopping done—I’ve promised pashminas to too many friends to go back to Spain empty handed.  Shopping near an Indian tourist district, though, can be a bit complex.

We started off just asking questions—which stores had pashminas, what was the price range,  what made one pashmina more expensive than another.  Then we did price and material comparisons, walking between several different stores.  I texted SW back in Mumbai for her opinion on prices.  Several shop owners assured us that the prices, while of course excellent, were not fixed.

We started off in the outskirts, then ran into one of J’s friends from her past few months of travel in India.  After a few minutes’ conversation, we piled onto their motorcycles and rode in towards the center of town.  Had I ever ridden on a motorcycle before?  Of course not.  J suggested I ride with guy she knew better, a friend who she’d traveled with for three weeks in southern India.  She (kindly, without laughing at me) showed me how to climb onto the motorcycle and hold onto my enormous camera bag during the ride.  Then we were off.

Nice guy who I’m riding with: “Feel safe?”

Me: “Sure!  I just hope my hyperventilating isn’t too much of a distraction.”

Nice guy: *confused silence*

We made it to the center of town, thanked the guys, and made very approximate plans to meet up again in the next few days.  Then we went back to pashmina shopping.

We went into many more shops, fingering the fabrics and making awkward conversation with store owners.  After a couple more hours of indulging in that convoluted process, though, we were quite tired and still hadn’t purchased a single pashmina between us!  So, we did the logical thing: we went for ice cream.

The standard ice cream pop here seems to be the mango dali (not sure about the spelling there), which is basically like an old-fashioned US American Creamsicle in which the orange ice cream has been replaced by mango ice cream.  Delicious?  Of course.

Now I’m back at the guesthouse for a few hours.  It’s weird not knowing how to get into the city center myself; while this place has been wonderful, I’ll probably switch to a more urban hostel for my last couple nights here so that I can get around without depending on rides from the guest house’s owner.  This guesthouse seems like it would be perfect for a long stay; for my few nights in Udaipur, though, I want to make sure I fit in some touristy time too!

On the tourism note, here are some of my photos from the afternoon in the city center:

That evening we stopped at a restaurant with a great view of Monsoon Castle (unfortunately it was too dark to really take pictures).  Then we came back to the guesthouse, where I plunged into a wonderful conversation with J about….well, travel, the universe and everything.  J is Austrian, nineteen years old, and taking her gap year to travel the globe.  Right now she’s wrapping up three months of travel in India and plans to continue her solo travel with a couple months of backpacking in eastern Turkey and Iran.

By the end of that conversation, I had of course realized that I would have to come back to India to see more of the country at some point (and for at least two or three months, of course.)

On that wonderful note, it’s time for bed.  I miss both home and Spain right now, but at the same time I’m so happy to be here!  If only all life’s dilemmas could be so positive.