Arriving at Kumbhalgarh

 I spent one week in Jaipur where I stayed at the Sarovar Portico Hotel. Which was very nice, the room was nice, the air conditioning was good, I could keep the temperature under control, the wifi was reliable meaning I could get a lot of work done, but apart from leaving my room to go to the restaurant over the road, I didn’t really do a lot of anything else.

Following my stay in Alwar my attitude towards using hotel facilities changed. Alwar was my first real starting point in India, I had two weeks of intensive Ayurvedic therapies which I have spoken about extensively in previous posts, so I don’t want to spend too much time talking about that now, but it anchored me. Alwar is not pretty, at least not where I was staying, but it served its purpose, and more so taught me lessons I needed to learn, which I took with me to Jaipur. The staff at the Ayurveda Hospital became friends, and I was sad to leave that behind when I left, although Dr Sobhagya is now a Facebook friend so I can keep in touch with them all through him, thankfully.

Dr Ashok Kumar Sharma, and Dr Sobhagya Deep Mishra, and the beautiful lady I was to shy to ask her name.

 India has always been a fantasy destination for me, but prior to coming here, what I knew of it was what I learned on TV, which in truth was just someone else’s fantasy, although in all honesty, those fantasies are real, just not what I have experienced for myself since arriving. 

I spoke in my last post about the chaos I encountered trying to book a train, which in the end I gave up on because I have my health issues to consider, and although the cost of travelling by taxi is way more expensive, it is also very cheap by British standards, so ultimately it was a no brainer for me to make the choices I have. At the same time though it has been frustrating. I am forced to make decisions I would rather not, because of Indian bureaucracy, which has led me far away from my own fantasy.

When I arrived in Jaipur, my driver took me through the old city which was amazing, and eye opening, and whilst being the stuff of fantasy, it is also far from the experience I was looking for. Everything is crammed into any available space, ostentatious jewellery shops wedged in between car repair shops and grocery stands, trees and dust and milling people jostling for space. Area’s where traffic gels into gridlock where young women with babies knock on car windows begging for Rupees, young boys selling balloons and anything they could make a penny on selling. 

A roadside convenience in Old Jaipur

That sort of thing might be exciting for some, but I have often said, ‘drop me on a hillside with the wind lacerating my face and I am in my element’, but in the crowded mayhem of old Jaipur, the romance escaped me, to be replaced by the immediacy of being confronted by the juxtaposition of life and death on the streets of an ancient India where sentiment escaped me, replaced by the brutal truth, and in that truth I feel deeply ashamed of my Britishness.

It’s because I know in this throng of humanity, those who have, keep it for themselves, and leave those without to scrap and scrape for what little they can salvage, which in large part is the legacy of the British Raj  who ruled India for 200 years, all the while stripping everything of value, so that a handful of entitled nobles could enrich themselves beyond measure, whilst sneering at the majesty of Godlike eminences like Mahatma Gandhi, our own Prime minister  calling him a ‘half naked Indian fakir’, and yet us small, nothing Britons are taught to look up to monsters like him who have no sense of the devastation  they inflict.

Perhaps I am too sensitive for that reality, or rather, my eyes are open to the tragedy of it. And it is that which I shy away from, I cannot bear to look because it cuts deep, deeper than any lacerating hillside wind of a Lancashire winter.

Where I stayed in Jaipur was far removed from the old city, it was in one of  the modern commercial area’s of the city, with it’s wide roads, it’s army of suicidal motor cycle madmen, and scooter throngs. My mate Fatty would love it here, with all its Royal Enfield Bikes taking centre stage in droves, in this land where dust, not rust eats into the fabric of the manufactured megalopolis.

This was where the sky is grey, with dust and fumes, and the sun though scorching can hardly be seen, and yet come dusk, in the view from my fourth floor window, I could see a myriad of different bird species crowding the airspace picking off flying bugs galore, and as the light failed pigeons encamped on my window ledge prooing and cooing, and jostling  for a space to roost.

Jaipur from my window at the Sarovar Portico Hotel

So I didn’t see much of old Jaipur, but I made friends. As I said, I didn’t want to make the same mistakes I made in Alwar, getting stripped of every penny the hotel there could extract, I had a look around the neighbourhood for eating places, and after trying a few, I settled on “Marshall’s Corner”, directly across from my room  at the hotel. I was looking for somewhere convenient, where I could afford to eat well enough, and stick to my Ayurvedic principles which demands, fresh produce daily, not heavy on the spice, and there at “MarshalI’s Corner” I found it on my doorstep.

On my first visit a young man called ‘Harsh’, who assured me his name translated in English to ‘Happy’, he looked after me, he listened to my attempt at bargaining, which wasn’t necessary, because the menu prices were more than reasonable, and he promised me I would be fed properly at the right price, which I was, so much so I have put on weight. 

The vegetarian diet is more than satisfying, unfortunately, my love of Paneer is making its mark around my middle. I blame Ayurveda. I have to eat twice a day, for my medication, but I can’t carry on like this, I will soon be obese at this rate. Which reminds me, my first foray into the eateries of this part of the city, I found a restaurant around the corner packed with locals.

Luckily, although I had no clue what I was looking at, the menu was written in both the familiar European script along side the Devanagari typography I find so alien, so I looked instead at what was contained in trays behind the counter, and pointed at what turned out to out to be Chola, a rich, spicy chickpea curry made with onions, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and a blend of spices like cumin, coriander, garam masala, and amchur (dried mango powder) for tanginess.

I was at a loss, umming and ahhing to myself, when a man stood next to me told me “it is chola bhature, and it is really yummy”. I wanted to laugh. Here I was totally lost in a culture as old as civilisation itself, and a total stranger was using vernacular like ‘Yummy’, speaking to me in English, taking away my sense of being lost in a labyrinth of sensations I had not known before. So I tried it, and he was ‘spot on’, another adopted vernacular, it was just what I needed. 

The Bhature is a deep-fried, leavened bread made from white flour (maida). When fried, they puff up into those balloon like, golden, airy breads—crispy on the outside and soft inside. They look oily, but are light and irresistible.

Harsh, has become my friend. During our conversations Hinduism became a topic, and he was fascinated by my own direct spiritual experiences. I know a lot of people back in Blighty switch off when I speak about it, one or two actually blocked me for it, but not all. But here in India it is a conversational topic, and when you relate on a personal level, it gets deeper. 

Harsh surprised me. I found myself talking to this young man, young enough to be my grandchild, asking me who my guru is, well that was easy. I brought with me to India, my copy of “Autobiography of a Guru”, by Parmesansa Yogananda, the man who introduced America to Yoga, set up colonies and ashrams, and became quite the celebrity sensation of his time.

(At the time of writing, as I am sat alone in my hotel room, Harsh sent me this picture of Parmahansa Yogananda

He told me ‘coincidentally’, ‘I came across this picture whilst scrolling through social media’. I replied, Parmahansa does not believe in coincidence , hahaha’.

Through Harsh I met the owners to the restaurant, initially Satyavrat, but then his father, who although not so large in the physical sense as his son, was immense. I felt I was in the presence of somebody special, I had the impression that Marshall’s is a toy business for Satyavrat to learn the ropes of running a business, to ready him for future responsibilities, but the main driver is Mr Sunil Gangwar, a man who has businesses dotted around India, PLC’s on the Indian stock market.

What moved me most—far more than any rightful praise of his business accomplishments—was the quiet, tender devotion he showed toward Satyavrat, and the ease with which it was returned. I’ve never witnessed anything quite like it: a natural pride so deeply woven into the fabric of fatherly love that it needed no embellishment. It wasn’t cloying or sentimental. It didn’t try to impress. It just felt real.

Satyavrat invited me to the hotel owned by his father about 45 Km outside Jaipur, the drive there took us from the commercial center, through the urban and rural area’s of Jaipur, without ever actually entering uninterrupted countryside, the city conglomeration spreads its web like gossamer across the land, and everywhere you look you could see the imprint of mighty city of Jaipur, certainly within the radius of our journey.

It is both incredible, and sad, because of the cost of human sprawl. I spoke above about the British rape of India, and that legacy is plain to see in the degradation of infrastructure all around, yet rising out of the ashes of empire, a new India is emerging.

 This young developing nation cannot just heal the scars of British colonialism, but you see for yourself among the rubble and the rubbish, the new, the bright and shining pride this nation holds in itself. I have no doubt, the frustrations I harbour are rooted in western privilege and entitlement. I can’t just have what I want.

 Sure, I can afford to buy the car I want, but that takes it off the market for those who deserve it more. Ask any  pretty costal town or village, in a beauty spot in England what they think of second home buyers pricing their children out of local accommodation, they will echo the same sentiment, ‘Who do these outsiders think they are depriving the indigenous of their birthright?’

Yesterday I left Jaipur, although Jaipur and my friends there have stayed within me, I could not just leave. Although I cannot abide in city life, I take with me something far more meaningful. In that city steeped in time immemorial I was touched by friendship and the vision of something I never knew for myself, fatherly love. 

Jain temple complex running the length of the hillside this photo does not do justice

I have nights every so often when I don’t or can’t sleep. The night  before I left was one of those. Maneesh, my driver today picked me up at 6am, so when it got to 3am, and I was still awake, I decided to stay awake, rather than miss my alarm, but that meant I fell asleep on the drive and missed large parts of the drive, but in-between naps, I saw the flora and fauna evolving from one terrain into the next. 

Rajasthan is largely desert, not as we Brits imagine, like the Sahara, although Maneesh assured me the on the other side of the Aravalli Hills, the land does indeed break down into shifting sands, and as we lifted off the plains onto higher ground, the geology became rockier, with giant boulders breaking, and crumbling down, irresistibly,  into dust steeped from the heat of a billion years of heat intensity never witnessed on Britains temperate shores.

 We turned a corner to be greeted by the twinkling laser light brightness of age old silica beaming “like a million diamonds shining in the midday sun” – a quote from my good friend Micheal William Neary – The Bard of Bowland, given in tribute to his gravely ill mother during the winter of 2010, when temperatures in the Ribble Valley dropped to minus 15 degrees centigrade, in his prayer for her revival, but not today in the searing brightness of the Rajasthan sun,

 Here the rain falls occasionally, bringing mountain sides to life with verdant greens, the ubiquitous prosopis cineraria, sprawling over hillsides and mountains alike, interspersed with kejri, belpatra, babool (acaicia) and others,  tree species I have never seen before. Everywhere I see living rich India, diverse beyond reason, eating into my very being, this country derided by the entitlement of colonialism, raped by empire, rising from the ashes of imperialism. 

Here I see an impoverished nation older than civilisation, I see an endurance which will still be here long after the nazi ideal of one world government and those responsible for its controlling philosophy turn to dust. Even Alexander the Great succumbed to its reality.

The view from the veranda outside my door at the Rajwadi Palace Hotel,  Kumbhalgarh,

 Kumbhalgarh isn’t so remote, not really. The roads on the way here are mainly well paved and in good order, but it is far away from the rural sprawl of the plains of Rajasthan, where you see people seeking an existence from the land. I was miffed at myself when we arrived here, I  had taken photos of my journey and my phone was dying, and what power it had I thought I would need for piggybacking my computer wifi when I got here.

 There is wifi here, but it is intermittent, and unreliable, but hey, the view from the window! Wow!!

This is the india I came in search of, where the roads are quiet and navigable, not jam packed with a never ending stream of tuk tuk’s, scooters, and every other motor you can imagine all vying for the same space, with no priority, no lane discipline, no lane sense, no road management, if a space appears, instantly a hundred hundred vehicles claim it for themselves, and poor you if you are in the way.

All that is gone in Kumbhalgarh, it reminds me a little of Chiaves, an alpine village from my childhood on holiday visits to my family in Italy, quiet and quaint, peaceful and wholesome.

The promised A/C in my hotel room, turns out to be a ceiling fan shifting the incandescent heat around just enough to give the impression of something cooler than the ambient temperature. But hey, I’m here, night has fallen, and I am sweating, as if I hadn’t imagined this is what it was always going to be about, this is India, not the Ribble Valley where you still have to wear a jumper to keep the cold at bay, even in June.

And now, after eight hours sleep, the most I have managed in forty years, I have woken. The bolt holding my door closed must have slipped during the night, because I neglected to give it the turn it needed to lock it in place, because the door is open onto the veranda outside. And while I sit here editing my post, one if the staff has brought me a pot of chai, rich and scented, and a dish of Poha.

Everything feels perfect, poha, a classic, light Indian dish made from flattened rice, cooked with mustard seeds, turmeric, green chillies, peanuts, onions and assorted vegetables. Far from the madding crowds, perched on a hillside in rural India, the sound of birdsong filtering through my open door, being rested, and feeling for the first time since before long covid ruined my life in England, that finally I can feel at peace.