Travelling Around Britain and the World

Sunday 28 January 2018

Bikaner to Jaisalmer: Rajasthan Part 4

India
Rajasthan
This post covers day 5 of a 16-day journey around Rajasthan.

The size of Germany, Rajasthan is the largest of India’s 29 states. With the Thar Desert covering the north and west it is one of India’s less densely populated states, though with 200 people per km² (the same as Italy) it is hardly empty.

From Bikaner we travelled to Jaisalmer at the western extremity of our route.

In the 11th and 12th centuries the rise of the Rajputs created some 20 or so petty kingdoms ruled by Maharajas - the ‘Rajput Princes’. These kingdoms, at first independent, later vassal states of the Mughal or British Empires survived until 1947, when the Maharajahs led their ‘Princely States’ into the new Union of India, creating Rajasthan (the ‘Land of Princes’). The rulers became constitutional monarchs until 1971 when the Indian government ended their official privileges and abolished their titles. ‘Maharaja’ is now a courtesy title, but most remain leading members of their communities and some are still immensely rich. Several, like their British counterparts, have supplemented their income by turning forts and palaces into tourist attractions and hotels.

-o0o0o-

Crossing the Thar Desert

After a breakfast of fruit, eggs and potato curry we set out on the 320km journey west across the Thar Desert to Jaisalmer.

The cereal harvest was coming to its end and straw, from rice, wheat and other crops is a useful by-product. Much of it was on the move, packed into trucks with bulging canvas extensions. Most looked overloaded, but the one that ground to a halt on the road out of Bikaner was not so much overweight as morbidly obese, the groaning canvas flopping wearily onto the tarmac. Umed squeezed past, giving us a close-up of the patched sides, the stretched stitches threatening a straw tsunami.

Overloaded rice carrier stranded in Bikaner

On the outskirts we followed a truck-load of garlic while camel carts waited by the roadside for someone to hire them.

Following garlic out of Bikaner
Out of town, we hit the main highway. It will be a good road eventually, but current up-grading meant many contraflows. The signs took some interpreting – but in the light traffic it caused no problem.

The end of a contraflow, but I have no idea what the sign means
Irrigation produced several stretches of green, though the fields hardly looked lush. We passed another straw carrier, bulging but waddling along.

Straw carrier, west of Bikaner
The flat sandy desert, studded with thorn trees, stretched away into the misty distance. Tiny settlements of circular thatched dwellings or sand-coloured cuboids came and went. Several had small temples, some blue, some gleaming white with tapering corn-cob towers, so unlike the flamboyant gopura of the south.

Roadside settlement, Thar Desert
!As luck (or incompetence) would have it I have a non-sand coloured building in the photo, and no temple
Contraflows often began and ended without warning; just a gap in the central reservation and some compressed sand marked with tyre tracks invited drivers to the opposite carriageway. Sometimes the invitation was unclear, different drivers took different views and for a while traffic travelled in both directions on both carriageways. In other places the road disappeared completely.

Where has the road gone? On the way to Jaisalmer
The scrub became scrubbier, the sand sandier and the trees more stunted, but there were always people. The Thar Desert covers a third of Rajasthan, making it one of India's more sparsely populated states, but in India such things are relative and the Thar is said to be the world's most densely populated desert. There were road workers, machinery and dumps of sand and gravel, ….

Roadworks on the way to Jaisalmer
Here, constant sprinkling with water to keep down the dust has created mud
…people ambled along the roadside going I know not where and shepherds led small mixed flocks of sheep and goats.

?With all that desert to use why does the shepherd lead his flock down the middle of the road
We passed isolated tea stalls and a group of people standing in the shade of a tree in the middle of nowhere waiting for… well who knows? Cattle wandered through the scrub finding something to graze on - they looked healthy enough - and we saw the odd dog, and one wild pig but in the first 100 km there were no towns and no settlements large enough to be properly called a village.

Cattle often stroll across the the road as though they had right of way - and in this overwhelmingly Hindu country, I suppose they do
After a couple of hours, we passed a substantial electricity substation and shortly afterwards a truck stop, the road lined with tea stalls and cheap eateries. Dozens of dwellings clustered around, but I have no idea how the residents made a living – they could not all live from selling tea and samosas.

Around the half-way mark we passed the edge of a town, a large cinema sitting beside the road. This was Phalodi, home to 50,000 people and a centre of the salt industry. It also holds the record for the highest shade temperature recorded on the Indian subcontinent (51° in May 2016).

Coming the other way was a convoy of twenty or thirty vehicles, cars, SUVs and trucks, all crammed with people. 'Muslim community,' Udem said, 'probably a wedding.'

50km on we paused for lunch at a roadside restaurant.

The roadside restaurant near Pokaran looks palatial
It looked impressive on the outside, a little more basic inside but, for a price, they produced the regulation samosas and lime soda. A small bus tour arrived and were served a set menu; again we were in the ‘agreed place for feeding foreigners’ which accounted for the high prices (though not by European standards) and uninspiring food. We decided we needed a talk with Umed.
but is more modest inside...
We did not know it, but we were on the edge of Pokaran, a small town with a 14th century citadel, now a heritage hotel run by the local royal family. Being Jagadir of Pokaran is like being King of Uttoxeter, only sandier. More apocalyptically Pokaran, or the desert a few kilometres to the north, was the site of India’s first underground nuclear weapon’s test in 1974 and five further tests, including a thermo-nuclear device in 1998. There is currently a moratorium on testing.

For most of the last 50 or so kilometres the road was in good condition. There were regular signs of habitation, one village even had a name board. A lengthy section to the north of the road was occupied by a military base - ‘cut hard, cut deep’ to quote the unpleasant motto over the entrance. Not only was the Pokaran site nearby, but the Pakistan border was only 80km away so the area was of military importance, maybe that was why this section of road had been completed first - which did not mean it was obstacle free.

Nearing Jaisalmer
We were expecting to soon catch sight of Jaisalmer, its fort on a rocky bluff above the desert, but suddenly Umed turned left down a side road and a couple of hundred metres later we reached the Rajwada Fort, which we had expected to be in the heart of the city. The Rajwada Fort is a modern resort hotel, not a fort at all. It is not a bad resort hotel, as these things go, but I dislike the whole concept. We had been looking forward to staying in Jaisalmer’s historic centre and here we were, stuck out in a luxury ghetto for foreigners several miles away. I vetted the suggested hotels when organising this trip and changed a couple but had lazily assumed that because Jaisalmer has a fort in which there are hotels, then the Rajwada Fort….  - it was my fault.

The Rajwada Fort Hotel, Jaisalmer

We spent what little remained of the afternoon drinking gold-plated beer beside the pool.

Beside the pool, Rajwada Fort Hotel
In the evening we dined in the hotel (where else was there?) again eschewing the tourist buffet in favour of the à la carte. I am not sure how spicy Achaari murgh (pickle-style chicken) should be, it is cooked in pickling spices with plenty of chilli but most recipes include yoghurt which calms things down. This version was medium, pleasant enough but not desperately exciting. Khichdi is a melange of lentils, rice and spices, basically Indian comfort food. To give the restaurant the benefit of the doubt, it may have been our choices which we uninspired, not their cooking.

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Saturday 27 January 2018

Bikaner: Rajasthan Part 3

India
Rajasthan
This post covers day 4 of a 16-day journey around Rajasthan.

The size of Germany, Rajasthan is the largest of India’s 29 states. With the Thar Desert covering the north and west it is one of India’s less densely populated states, though with 200 people per km² (the same as Italy) it is hardly empty.

Today's Journey, Mandawa to Bikaner across northern Rajasthan

In the 11th and 12th centuries the rise of the Rajputs created some 20 or so petty kingdoms ruled by Maharajas - the ‘Rajput Princes’. These kingdoms, at first independent, later vassal states of the Mughal or British Empires survived until 1947, when the Maharajahs led their ‘Princely States’ into the new Union of India, creating Rajasthan (the ‘Land of Princes’). The rulers became constitutional monarchs until 1971 when the Indian government ended their official privileges and abolished their titles. ‘Maharaja’ is now a courtesy title, but most remain leading members of their communities and some are still immensely rich. Several, like their British counterparts, have supplemented their income by turning forts and palaces into tourist attractions and hotels.

-o0o0o-

Palaces and Sweets

Wildlife by the Road to Fatehpur

Next morning, we left the haveli at Mandawa and set off for Bikaner some 180 km east across the Thar desert. At first we followed a minor road, wide but heavily patched, running straight across the arid scrub to Fatehpur.

The minor road from Mandawa to Fatehpur
We had not been going long when Umed suddenly brought the car to a halt, pointed to our right and said 'nilgai.' I did not like to admit I had no idea what 'nilgai' meant (Lynne tells me she was less ignorant) so I followed his finger and saw that his sharp eyes had spotted a group of antelopes in the shade of some trees. The nilgai (blue bull) is endemic to the Indian sub-continent and is locally common.  This group were all females, we saw a male a little further on, but too far off to photograph [update: we did better at Ranthambhore]. They are larger than the females, surprisingly bull shaped and really are blue(ish) hence the name.
Nilgai by the Mandawa -  Fatehpur road
 Fatehpur (not to be confused with Fatehpur Sikri the purpose built Mughal capital near Agra) is 20 km from Mandawa and has one notable haveli controversially restored by the French artist Nadine le Prince. The wholesale repainting of murals has upset some but her haveli stands in sharp contrast to the once elegant but now sad, broken-down havelis around it. Fatehpur generally looked a sad broken-down town, the road surface disappearing for several hundred metres and water (where did that come from?) had collected in a dip to form a small muddy flood.

The town centre was more lively, and on the southern outskirts we re-joined the main Jaipur - Bikaner highway.

Fatehpur town centre

The Lallgarh Palace, Bikaner


The remaining 160km was on a good road and we reached Bikaner in time for lunch. Umed drove us straight to the Lallgarh Palace.
Approaching the Lallgarh Palace, Bikaner

The Rough Guide describes Bikaner as a 'smog filed commercial city'. Built on land as flat as a pancake it seemed, at first sight no worse, or better than other Rajasthani cities. Rao Bika founded the city in 1486 and named it after himself, following in the footsteps of his father Rao Jodha, King of Marwar, who had named his new capital Jodhpur.

Rao Bika was the first of 22 rulers of the Bikaner State, which later became a vassal of the Mughal Empire and then of the British Empire. His successors were granted the title of Rajah by the Mughal Emperors in the late 16th century, and Maharaja a century later. In 1947 Maharaja Sadul Singh led the rulers of Rajasthan's princely states in joining the new Republic of India. The title was officially abolished, in 1971, but Sadul Singh’s grandson Ravi Raj Singh holds the courtesy title. He is a Jaipur based banker, while his sister Rajyashree Kumari, owns and lives at the Lallgarh (or Lalgarh) Palace, Bikaner.

Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob designed the Laxmi Niwas Palace for Maharaja Ganga Singh and building started in 1896. It was later extended to become the Lallgarh Palace and part of the complex is now a heritage hotel.
The Lallgarh Palace Hotel, Bikaner

Checking in to a palace feels slightly strange, and our room was certainly palatial. We hardly had time to hike its length and breadth before grabbing a lunch of mixed pakoras and setting off with Umed and local guide, G, to Junagarh.
Our room in the Lallgarh Palace Hotel

Junagarh, Bikaner

Rao Bika built Bikaner’s first fort, but by the 16th century something larger and stronger was required so Maharaja Rai Singh oversaw the building of the Chintamani Fort. Completed in 1594 (though many additions were made in the following centuries), it is vast, walls 4m thick and 12m high, once surrounded by a moat 6m deep, defended an area of 5ha. The only major fort in Rajasthan not built on a hill or rocky outcrop – Bikaner has no such thing – it was attacked several times but never taken. By the late 19th century the comforts of a modern palace were more attractive than the security of a medieval fort, so the Lallgarh Palace was built and Chintamani was renamed Junagarh (lit: Old Fort).

Junagarh, Bikaner

With several courtyards, six mahals and a garden I apologise in advance for any omissions or misplacements.
We entered the main courtyard through the Suraj Pol (Sun Gate). Beside the Daulat Pol are the red handprints of 41 royal women who committing sati, joining husbands killed in battle on their funeral pyres. First mentions of the practice date from the 3rd century BC, but it grew in popularity (if that is the right word) between the 5th and 9th centuries among the warrior nobility, the very people who would rule Rajasthan, before spreading throughout India. At first tolerated by the British, pressure from Christian missionaries and Hindu reformers led to the practice being banned in West Bengal in 1829 and throughout India in 1861 with little opposition. G did not show us the handprints, I do not know why.
Sandstone end of the main courtyard, Junagarh

The mahals largely surround the main courtyard which maybe sandstone at one end but has a Mughal style pool in Carrara marble at the other.
Marble end of the main courtyard, Junagarh

The highly decorated Karan Mahal…. 
Decorated ceiling, Karan Mahal, Junagahr, Bikaner

…was built by Raja Karan Singh (r1631-67) to celebrate a victory over the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. Above the raja’s throne is a punkah to keep the great man cool, though now the room is air conditioned the punkah-wallah has had to find another job.
Throne in the Karan Mahal, Junagarh, Bikaner

We crossed another courtyard…
Courtyard, Junagarh, Bikaner

To the Anup Mahal. After his initial defeat Aurangzeb did not back down, deposing Karan Singh, installing Anup Singh in his stead and promoting him to Mahajara. The Anup Mahal is the grandest room in the palace. The carpet in front of the sumptuously decorated throne was made by the inmates of Bikaner jail, a manufacturing tradition that survived until recently.
Anup Singh's throne, Anup Mahal, Junagarh, Bikaner

The walls of 19th century Badal Mahal (Cloud Palace), more a wide corridor than a hall, are painted to representing a sky suffused with monsoon clouds threaded with snakes of lightening.
Badal Mahal, Junagarh, Bikaner

Up the stairs we entered a room full of oddities, the medals given to the local rulers by the Mughal empire who did not mess around with little things to pin on your chest…
Mughal medals, Junagarh, Bikaner

…and various beds of nails and swords….
Swords for standing on, should you so desire, Junagarh, Bikaner

…used by sadhus to demonstrated whatever it is they demonstrate.
Sadhu standing on swords, Junagarh, Bikaner

We passed the maharaja’s swing (apparently his slide, roundabout and dodgems not on show) on our way to…
The Maharaja's swing, Junagarh, Bikaner

…the Chandra Mahal which includes the royal bedrooms. The low bed prevents assassins hiding beneath it, while strategically placed mirrors ensured the maharaja could observe any who approached.
Chandra Mahal, Junagarh, Bikaner

A window gave a view of the gardens as we made our way downstairs to the 20th century Ganga Mahal.
Palace Garden, Junagarh, Bikaner

Maharaja Ganga Singh

In the twilight years of India’s ruling maharajas, Maharaja Ganga Singh (r1887-1943) - General Sir Ganga Singh - was a colossus. ‘He was a general in the English Army,’ G told us, slightly awestruck. My inner pedant wanted to tell him there has been no such thing as the ‘English Army’ since the Act of Union in 1707, but I suppressed the irritating know-all. Ganga Singh joined the army in 1898 and fought for the British in China during the Boxer rebellion. He formed and led the Bikaner Camel Corps which fought in the Somaliland campaign (1902-4) and in Egypt during the First World War. In 1917 Lloyd George appointed him to the War Cabinet, a group of 12 men (no women) who met throughout 1917 and 18 to discuss the nature for the post-war British Empire. The cabinet included Lloyd George himself and the Primer Ministers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa while India was represented by the Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces and Ganga Singh, the only non-white face at the table. He later represented India at the Versailles Peace Conference and at the League of Nations.
War cabinet 1917 (and aides), Ganga Singh is second from left, middle row with resplendent Maharaja's moustache

Quite how he came to acquire a de Havilland bi-plane during his First World War exploits is obscure, but it is currently exhibited in the Ganga Mahal.
Ganga Singh'a de Havilland bi-plane, Ganga Mahal, Junagarh, Bikaner

At home, he responded to the 1899-90 famine by building an irrigation system to ensure it never happened again, he established a Supreme Court with independent judges, established limited local democracy and promoted the education of girls and women. He was an all-round good egg, who devoted his life to the service of Bikaner, India and the British Empire, but found time to build himself the vast and comfortable Lallgarh Palace.

Rasgulla and Bikaner's Other Famous Sweets


More than once G had mentioned the excellence of Bikaner’s sweets so it seemed a good idea to hunt some out. Umed drove us into the city centre and G led a short walk past some vegetable stalls…
Vegetable stalls, Bikaner

… and several havelis, some in poor repair, others carefully repurposed…
Restored havelli, Bikaner
… and near the Ashirwad Eggs Zone…
Ashirwad Eggs Zone, Bikaner
… was the city's foremost sweet stall.
Sweet stall, Bikaner
We perused the goodies on display and at G's suggestion bought a couple of Rasgulla, fluffy white balls of cottage cheese steeped in rose water. ‘Give them a pinch,’ G instructed, ‘to squeeze out the excess rosewater then pop then in your mouth.’ We did, they were lovely, but at 10 rupees each over far too quickly. At twice the price we tried their larger yellow cousins flavoured with saffron. They were even lovelier, so we bought some more.
Eating saffron rasgulla, Bikaner (I don't know why the fellow on our left is regarding us with such suspicion)
We arrived back at the Lallgarh Palace as the light was beginning to fade but had time for a walk round the gardens and a look at the statue of the redoubtable Ganga Singh, who built it all.
Maharaja Ganga Singh at the Lallgarh Palace

Laal Mans and Ker Sangria - Dinner Rajasthani Style

Rejecting the buffet in favour of the à la carte at dinner we choose laal maas (or maans), the same dish, we discovered, that we had eaten under a different name in Jaipur. Laal maas, red lamb, is a local stew, the meat slowly cooked in a rich sauce packed with fire and flavour. A good Laal Maas should put sweat on the brow, and this one did, though we eschewed the bowl of yogurt supplied in case our tender foreigner’s palates needed some fire-fighting. With it we ordered ker sangria. According to legend, ker, the berry of a wild shrub and sangria, the bean of the Khejari tree, were only eaten in time of famine, then someone put them together, cooking them with chillis, asafoetida, turmeric, ajwain, mango powder and coriander and created a local favourite, served at every Rajasthani wedding. A dry dish it went well with the laal maas with its ample sauce, its flavour mild but unusual, though the ker berry was a little sour for my taste.
Lynne, laal maas and ker sangri, Lallgarh Palace, Bikaner

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Location: Bikaner, Rajasthan, India
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