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I'm writing this on my amazing new computer at the New Delhi train station, instead of riding on the train to Jaipur, which it turns out left from the Old Delhi train station. Whoops. Anyway, Michele got here on Friday night, and I'm overjoyed. I've survived without her here, but unhappily. Even Naheed told me that I wasn't any fun without Michele here. So we've been doing the Delhi thing, eating appam (like a steamed dosa, but better than that sounds) with coconut milk and Mangalorean tomato chutney at Sagar, like we always do. Went to Humayun's Tomb, which was pretty rad but nowhere near as good as the Taj Mahal, which we'll be at in a few days. Every time we come to Delhi, I like it more. Especially when we can escape all the other foreigners who are here, Delhi becomes a really beautiful and subtle place. We spent a while wandering around a Jain neighborhood near Chandni Chowk, where there were just tons of beautiful, perfectly preserved late Mughal houses, with all sorts of delicate carvings. Inside, they're mostly decayed or just plastered over, but a lot of them still have terrific outsides. The best thing was when we ran into some kids playing the Wheel Of Kulfi - take a spin, and who knows, maybe you'll get four ice cream bars, instead of just one!
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Now writing from our swanky and cheap hotel in Jaipur. We got here two nights ago, and spent most of yesterday looking at the City Palace and just walking around. The Jaipur palace and everything around it are painted salmon-pink, and there are huge numbers of delicate old Rajput buildings (not that easy for me to distinguish from Mughal) all over, mostly in excellent repair, and even some with old murals still intact. The palace has all sorts of cool stuff, like the so-called "Four Seasons" doors, each of which has different, elaborate 250-year-old painted decorations, and a textile museum with goodies like a humongous brocade kurta worn by the 7-foot tall, 4-foot wide, 550-lb. 18th-century king of Jaipur.
Walking the jewellers' district after visiting the palace and having a tasty Marwari (Rajasthani) lunch, we stopped at a barber shop so I could get a very seriously needed shave. I asked the guys hanging out there what was playing at Jaipur's famous Art Deco movie palace, and they told me, Vivah (Wedding). Now, I saw this movie, as I have in fact seen every major Hindi movie that's out, and I can tell you with the authority of someone who has a pretty high tolerance for crappy Bollywood movies that it might not even rate a 1 on the 1-10 scale. Like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (Who Am I to You), by the same director, it's literally nothing more than a video of what happens from when two people get engaged to when they get married; unfortunately, it didn't even have the great songs that HAHK had, although it did have a snappy little misogynist number called "Mera Haq Hai" ("It's My Right"). Anyway, the guys swore that it was the best movie ever, and far superior to the other movies I mentioned, all of which I'd seen and knew to be great, and which I wanted to take Michele to. Pretty soon, they cleared out and I had a nice chat with the barber, while we drank some tea and he massaged my scalp. He had a lot to say about saving money by watching films at home and the declining quality of talismans these days. I agreed with him that people should take more time to do a good job, especially when he pointed out that he could easily shave a couple of minutes off his barbering, so to speak, but that would end up with me having a red neck, and not because of my illiterate and intolerant ways. I think that the reason that barbers tend to be awesome is that they don't normally have any interactions with suckers, also known as tourists. They're not salesmen in the normal way, and so they don't have any reason to be pushy or anything other than genial and talkative.
More pictures from Delhi and Jaipur
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Now writing from our swanky and cheap hotel in Jaipur. We got here two nights ago, and spent most of yesterday looking at the City Palace and just walking around. The Jaipur palace and everything around it are painted salmon-pink, and there are huge numbers of delicate old Rajput buildings (not that easy for me to distinguish from Mughal) all over, mostly in excellent repair, and even some with old murals still intact. The palace has all sorts of cool stuff, like the so-called "Four Seasons" doors, each of which has different, elaborate 250-year-old painted decorations, and a textile museum with goodies like a humongous brocade kurta worn by the 7-foot tall, 4-foot wide, 550-lb. 18th-century king of Jaipur.
Walking the jewellers' district after visiting the palace and having a tasty Marwari (Rajasthani) lunch, we stopped at a barber shop so I could get a very seriously needed shave. I asked the guys hanging out there what was playing at Jaipur's famous Art Deco movie palace, and they told me, Vivah (Wedding). Now, I saw this movie, as I have in fact seen every major Hindi movie that's out, and I can tell you with the authority of someone who has a pretty high tolerance for crappy Bollywood movies that it might not even rate a 1 on the 1-10 scale. Like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (Who Am I to You), by the same director, it's literally nothing more than a video of what happens from when two people get engaged to when they get married; unfortunately, it didn't even have the great songs that HAHK had, although it did have a snappy little misogynist number called "Mera Haq Hai" ("It's My Right"). Anyway, the guys swore that it was the best movie ever, and far superior to the other movies I mentioned, all of which I'd seen and knew to be great, and which I wanted to take Michele to. Pretty soon, they cleared out and I had a nice chat with the barber, while we drank some tea and he massaged my scalp. He had a lot to say about saving money by watching films at home and the declining quality of talismans these days. I agreed with him that people should take more time to do a good job, especially when he pointed out that he could easily shave a couple of minutes off his barbering, so to speak, but that would end up with me having a red neck, and not because of my illiterate and intolerant ways. I think that the reason that barbers tend to be awesome is that they don't normally have any interactions with suckers, also known as tourists. They're not salesmen in the normal way, and so they don't have any reason to be pushy or anything other than genial and talkative.
More pictures from Delhi and Jaipur