Raw Chana

Bundi has been a gem of a town. Just 5 hours from Udaipur (by train; or 12 hours by bus, half of which are on terrible, kidney-jarring, butt-numbing roads), Bundi has a beautiful old palace, a crumbling fort that’s a dream to wander around in, cheap guesthouses run by kind families, bats, no mosquitos, and nice people.

Nice people. Our first day here, we were standing outside the palace entrance waiting to meet up with Jaime and Marian (a couple we’d met on the beach at Gokarna and, luckily, ran into in Bundi) and a group of Indian men were munching on something green off bundles of small branches. I asked what they were eating (because I always want to know what people are eating) and one of the met handed me part of his bundle. They (and now we) were munching on raw chana, or chickpeas. Raw, each one is green and within a pod. They were fresh and delicious and fun to eat. In Bhutan, this sort of thing – strangers sharing food – always happened. In India, it’s never happened, especially strangers near a tourist hot spot.  

A Typical Conversation In India

An Indian stranger (to Scott and I): Hello. Where are you from?

Either Scott or I: The U.S.A.

Indian stranger: America! (then to Scott) Where is she from?

Scott: She’s from America, too.

Indian stranger (looking at me): You are not American. 

*

In fact, today I had a man, who after already hearing I’m from the States, said, “Your English is very good.”

“Monkey Take Shoes?”

the man at Rainbow Café asked. The upper half of his body was leaning out the only large opening of the rooftop restaurant’s bamboo covering – a barrier to protect customers and their meals against marauding monkeys. A monkey had indeed taken my Chaco sandal and run off with it. Scott, my hero, saw it happen behind my back and chased the mama monkey among the rooftops of Bundi.

We were up on the roof of our guesthouse to play cards, drink rum and cokes, and watch the sunset on this Rajasthani town. Our roof was perfectly situated between the towering palace and the lake. We were enjoying our vantage point over the animal kingdom that exists in Bundi – the cows, the territorial dogs, the wiry pigs and piglets, the parrots and pigeons, the tourists, and, of course, the monkeys. One papa monkey had already stolen our shiny bag of moong dal, oh so cavalierly. We watched as he sat on the corner of the next roof, ripped the bag open more, and ate the dal in handfuls, then lickfuls.

Now mama had my right sandal and Scott stood only a few feet away from her. In my mind, I saw the sandal as gone but Scott was determined. “Keep your eye on her. I’m going at her from behind,” he said. I did as he instructed and, within seconds, I watched as mama, who had just been gnawing on my sandal strap, turned, got an alarming look on her face, scooped up her baby, abandoned my Chaco, and ran off. Scott returned my sandal on one piece; it just had some monkey slobber on it.

I Heart Udaipur

Maybe I’m getting old, but I love the touristy, beautiful, enchanting city of Udaipur in Rajasthan. I loved the City Palace today – the inlayed glass, the tile work, the paintings of Moguls, the peacocks, the terraces and balconies and endless pillars and towers. I loved it all. 

We arrived yesterday by bus and took an auto-rickshaw to Hanuman Ghat in the old city. I had read and reread the printed out Lonely Planet pages of accommodations and had my heart set on a couple, but they were full. So we came to the Panorama Guesthouse and got a fabulous room – my favorite yet! – with wall paintings and sheets and towels and toilet paper (!) and two windows overlooking Pichola Lake. Picturesque Pichola Lake that holds two palaces on two separate islands. 

When we arrived at the Panorama Guesthouse, there was such a calm after our auto-rickshaw had just weaved through utter chaos on the other ghat before crossing the bridge. A peaceful calm – it was the first time I experienced that in India.

Mumbai

Mumbai is a city to love. It was our fourth major Indian city after Calcutta, Chennai, and Bangalore, and by far my favorite. It’s actually walkable with wide roads and, in some parts of the city, not that much traffic – a statement I could never say about the other cities. There are towering colonial buildings everywhere, parks to play cricket in, city landscaping, and the trash is actually controlled in some parts (the latter being, again, something I could never say about the other cities).

Mumbai is a city I could find myself living in. Of course, Scott would say we didn’t see the “real” Mumbai, a city where half the population lives in slums, or hutments. We were in the Churchgate, Fort, and Coloba districts, which make up the peninsula – a tiny fraction of the city that houses the museums, the Gateway of India arch, the Taj Mahal Hotel. We wandered around Marine Drive and Malabar Hill district as well, but still, Scott said, “The real Mumbai doesn’t have advertisements about going to Switzerland.” 

My rebuttal was that while we were not in the slums, what we were seeing, what we were walking through, which included Sunday roads empty enough to play street cricket on, was still the “real” Mumbai – real people walking, real people shopping, real people working, and yes, real people sitting at the New York Café drinking pitchers of Kingfisher beer, listening to ACDC, and watching cricket on TV. What we were experiencing may not have been the harsh Mumbai, the tragic Mumbai, the gut-wrenching Mumbai, but it was still the real Mumbai.

Beach Cows

A funny thing about Om Beach in Gokarna – the cows. They roam around the wide beach, stepping on towels and blankets that are laid out in their way. They sniff your belongings, eat discarded fruit peels, and wait at the entrance ways of restaurants. Sometimes they will be so daring as to walk up the steps of the restaurant and just linger until someone chases them away.

"Helloschoolpen"

This is how some of the kids in Hampi greeted us, as if these three words were actually one. And oftentimes they’d say it and not even wait for a response, perhaps because they didn’t know the meaning of what they were requesting. And I say “requesting” loosely. Requesting might entail a “please” or at least an obligatory introduction – “Hello, how are you?” and then, “School pen?”

It’s one of those things that grates on my nerves. Just like in Tanzania. When Scott and I would walk around the villages, we’d constantly hear, “Give me my money.” Not simply, “Give me money,” but, “Give me my money.”And while it bothers me, I recognize I’m part of the problem just by being a foreigner in their hometown. It’s not the Hampi kids’ fault that tourists have invaded their villages, brought in foreign money, and freely or not so freely given it away.

In Hampi, if a request for a school pen was not met then they’d ask for chocolate. If no chocolate, then one rupee. It was one thing if the child was clearly not in school and trying to sell postcards, but I hated to see a school kid (a child in uniform with a schoolbag on) attempt the same. 

I remember when Isdori, one of our bright students in Tanzania, told us that when he was young, he used to ask the same thing of foreigners – “Give me my money.” Scott and I were surprised when we heard this because Isdori is, now, so hip and modern. When we asked why he did that, he shrugged, said something to the affect of, “Just because. All the other kids were saying it.”

The amount of hippies at Baba’s is an iota of the Hampi’s population. It’s been pretty interesting to hang out here, feeling a tad bit out of place because our hair is not in clumps or with random patches shaved off. We’re not as young as most of the travelers here seem. We, for the most part, cover more of our bodies with clothing than the average traveler. We’re not riding around in a rented motorbike or scooter. And we’re American, a nationality which seems to be poorly represented in this part of Karnataka.

Of course, I’m mainly talking about appearances, which shouldn’t matter, but the general vibe here brings me back to Koh San Road circa 2001. (According to Baba, the first guesthouses opened in Hampi in 1990). No matter how I try to paint Scott and I as being different, once we have our backpacks on, we look exactly the same as everyone else. We’re a walking rupee sign, yet hard bargainers. We try to experience a place yet stay only two nights. It’s been hard to delve into this traveling lifestyle after having lived in places for a year at a time, to join the masses of people city-hopping, country-hopping, experience-hopping. I miss knowing people. I miss being known. I miss staying in one place. I miss shopping for vegetables – something so normal and mundane. I miss the feeling of having a place to call home, no matter how temporary it was.