Day 87 - Jodhpur to Ranakpur and Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

Day 87 – His

 The day began with me suffering the effects of last night’s dinner and a badly cooked chicken.  Someone else was suffering the same discomfort so I swear it was the chicken. Unfortunately today was scheduled to be an 8 hour drive down to Udaipur so I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. We had breakfast at our home stay and their big old Labrador pranced around us looking for food scraps. Labradors have a tendency to fat and this particular one was the size of a small coffee table, broad, squat and full of energy. He had already knocked a couple of people over. Our host was an ex air vice marshal and absolutely fascinating to talk to as most of his family (back 22 generations) had been in the army.

We drove for hours reading and dozing as we passed through countryside that was vaguely reminiscent of African savannah but with more palm trees and slightly fewer antelopes until we reached the temple of Ranakpur.

The temple of Ranakpur is a Jain temple and for those of you who don’t know what Jainism is and can’t be bothered to look it up – Jainism is a strict Hindu sect that believes that all things are a form of life for example fog, rain etc. So, as life is sacred and they are not allowed to kill anything the more serious of them wear masks in the fog and all of them don’t eat meat. They are only allowed to eat something if it has been killed for them – and then only vegetables. A pretty handy clause as not having it would mean the Jain sect would have died out years ago. I seem to remember that one vitamin – a B vitamin, I think – can only be sourced from meat products and strict veggies have to supplement their diet with vitamin pills if they are to avoid dying. The Jains, of course, have no vitamin pills and this was a cause of much interest to the world community and the World Health Organisation in particular who sent a team to find out why the Jains weren’t dead given their utter lack of this otherwise essential vitamin. The research team discovered that though the Jains weren’t eating any animal products per se, their grain stores had been infiltrated by mice and the mice on eating the rice left a little present for them in the grain. So, the highly religious sect owed its continued existence to eating the droppings the mice were leaving in the food. Something of a salutary tale I feel.

Anyhow, the Jains take the whole deal pretty seriously and they make you remove any animal products and you have to be covered (down to your knees and elbows) before you enter their temple. It is all very holy – particularly the 100 rupees they charge if you want to take a photo.

The Temple itself was particularly gorgeous, all intricately carved limestone that looked very much like Ankor Wat or at least like Ankor Wat would have looked like if it hadn’t been wrecked.

We clambered aboard the bus and wended our way off for another four hours or so until we got to Udaipur.

 

Day 87 – Hers.

It was a very long drive.  Bad enough on the toll roads through the desert – but quite nauseating on the winding, uphill bit through the nature reserve when we had to turn off the air conditioning and breathe the diesel fumes.  The landscape was quite beautiful in places – I must find out the name of the white-trunked trees with the fern-like leaves – and the villages interesting.  The Jain temple was, in fact, stunning – and the first place we have found that was very strict about its dress code.

Udaipur was also a pleasant surprise.  First impressions are that it is quite modern, reasonably clean and certainly our hotel has facilities we haven’t seen for a while: free wifi, cable TV, a kettle in the room, a lovely swimming pool and laundry service.  When we arrived, we spent an hour reconnecting to the world – and then met up with the group again for dinner.

Dinner was at another hotel restaurant – we still haven’t convinced Prabhev to take us anywhere truly local – but was still nice.  Rob had a pizza (something normalish given his fragile digestive system) and I had a vegetable biryani – quite spicy....I am finally managing to get across the fact that I don’t want the bland Westernised version of things – with my favourite fresh lime soda.  I note that many of the Australians are now having fresh lime sodas at lunchtime – not at dinner, though, then it’s definitely beer.

After dinner, we retired to our room for a last coffee and an early night – I still haven’t figured out why it’s so tiring to sit on a bus, but I’m exhausted!