Day 11: Jaisalmer

need to wake early. All that remains is to find our way into town and get to the finish line. We have beaten the Bjaj out of our chariot but feel confident that we can get it over the line today, pushing if necessary.

The final twist in our tale lies in the fact that we only have scant data on where the finish line actually is. We do know it is in the middle of the mediaeval fort that rises above the rest of Jaisalmer in a picturesque sort of manner that one would swear was concocted by Disney except that you don’t have to pay to get in.

Gingerly, we try our luck with the ‘rick. Amazingly, the engine fires after only twenty or thirty attempts and we begin our ride into Jaisalmer at the reduced rate of knots demanded by having only second gear and a dodgy engine.

The streets around the base of Jaisalmer fort are pretty much the confusing warren of alleyways that you would expect to find around the base of an old fort in the desert. But I had visited Jaisalmer twenty-some years back and, incredibly, some of the rubbish strewn, foul smelling, cow ridden back passages started to look familiar. We roared (in our imaginations we roared, in actuality we puttered) through to the main gate of the fort and immediately ran over a cow. But there was no time to stop, apologize or offer compensation – plus the cow seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing. The cobbled road up into the fort itself was steep and worn smooth by centuries of inhabitants and visitors. Remembering that we only had second gear it was essential to keep the speed up or risk stalling before reaching the line.

At last, bursting into what passes for the central square next to the palace, we see the line. There are no trumpets, chorus girls or fireworks. We had arrived shortly before nine in the morning and no-one was expecting us.

It was then that we realized we had won.

Day 10: Jaipur to Jailsamer ish

morning. The Sheraton travel desk has organized a pick up truck to take the ‘rick to Jaisalmer. The truck is made, by Mahindra, from the front end of a Land Rover Defender and the back end of something you would use to take several thousand chickens to market if you weren’t overly concerned about the comfort and well-being of the chickens

Unfortunately, the kind souls at the Sheraton had neglected to arrange half a dozen strong armed men to lift the rickshaw onto the truck. A rickshaw may well be a mechanically flimsy and capricious item, but it’s still darned heavy if you had to pick one up and put it somewhere else; especially if the somewhere else is  about three feet above where it started. The impromptu ringleader of the gathered hotel staff audience (for nothing we do takes place without an audience, even at six in the morning), rustles up some trestles from last night’s ruined nuptial ceremony and we push our ‘rick up and into the truck on the back of their top table.

Underway at last, it is not until now that we both realize just how dammed miserable the weather is this morning. The rain is hissing down and it’s chilly to boot. Nonetheless, we both are relieved. If all goes well, we can reach Jaisalmer by nightfall.

To be frank, both of us are feeling a little sheepish in throwing the ‘rick into a truck for the last big push however, we had 450 kilometers of desert ahead of us and a Bjaj that could be safely relied upon to make 50 or so before giving up the ghost. Moreover, Jaipur traffic had done for the transmission, leaving us with no clutch and a single gear – second. The deliberations went something along the lines of:

“I feel a little sheepish rolling into Jaisalmer on the back of a truckâ€

“It’s better than breaking down in the desert, dying horribly of thirst and having our empty eye sockets licked out by wild dogsâ€

“Good point, vividly madeâ€

Discussion concluded, we rolled on.

The landscape changes again as we exit Jaipur. Crags become replaced by giant boulders eroded into smooth, rounded French curves, but by what. Water, there was none. Wind, there was just enough to de-limp a couple of tiny flags on the roof of the local Police station. Yet I could have picked any two boulders at random, mortared them together and successfully passed the result off as an undiscovered sculpture by Henry Moore.

Rajasthan, more than any other state in India, feels like an old country. The topography is old. The landscape has been fought over, defended, closely husbanded for centuries. Nature has not given the residents of Rajasthan too much, but they have held it close, with a pride and exuberance that is more evident than in other, less martial states. Passing over rivers, one can see several successive generations of river crossings, evolving to meet the challenges of the day. First, a village erects a rough dirt and stone bridge to ease the ford when bringing the cattle home. Then, the Moghul enlarges the crossing, perhaps to facilitate cavalry. Then, the British put a narrow gauge railway through here to accelerate the movement of troops and guns to the latest conflagration. Finally, a road bridge is installed and our truck barrels through the geography, covering more miles in an hour than the Queen’s artillery used to cover in a day. All of these successive generations of civil engineering, less than a hundred yards apart.

Further into Rajasthan, we pass through marble city. All of the floors, walls, shower enclosures, mattresses, window frames, tables, columns, fountains, bathroom fittings and anything else that conceivably might be made of marble, plus some things that really should not, apparently pass through here. Literally hundreds of marble cutters, carvers, polishers and what not, line the road. There are sheets of marble enough for ten thousand kitchen counter tops; giant blocks of marble, the size of baby elephants; giant blocks of marble that have already been carved into baby elephants. Enormous, irregular, rough boulders of marble are sloughed into town, three to a flat bed – each truck looking as if it has had the misfortune to be struck by a trio of simultaneous and curiously aligned meteorites.

Fully assembled, miniature (i.e. smaller than castles, bigger than cars) temples are available for purchase by the side of the road. No home should be without one. They seem an unlikely impulse purchase. I hope they deliver.

Rocks begin to give way to sand and scrub as we enter the desert proper. Here and there, a row or two of giant sand dunes provide backdrop to the road as it is washed over with sand. All of the color has been washed out of the landscape; what vegetation exists is more grey than green. The only vibrancy is courtesy of the bright red saris and orange turbans of the infrequent inhabitants as they go about their business. Looking about, we are both relieved not to be taking this leg in a vehicle possessing all of the reliability and endurance of one operated by US Airways.

Jaisalmer is tucked away in a corner of the desert close to the Pakistan border. After the medieval opium traders, but before the backpackers, gawkers and rick runners, came the military – and they are still here. Bases of every description have been dropped onto the topography around Jaisalmer, providing a convenient spot for those in uniform to practice throwing, firing or dropping large explosive things. India’s semi-secret nuclear tests were conducted in these parts. Some of the first planes we have seen in ages are fighter bombers of the Indian Air Force.

Dark is falling and we cannot make the finish line today, but we can get close. We locate our lodging next to an air force base and settle into what appears to be the unofficial officers’ mess for the pilots from next door. There is a delightful Rajasthani cultural show underway on the hotel lawn. There is a Kingfisher beer centric cultural show inside. It is not difficult to imagine which is the more popular.

I sleep the sleep of pharaoh’s. It is hard to believe that we are nearly there.

Day 9: Jaipur

Both fed up by spending our days (and nights) by the side of the road, in gas station forecourts and the kind of hotels that would not pass muster as prison cells in the Unites States we take a day off to consider our options.

Amber fort (yes, another fort) lies just outside the city limits, embedded in a crack in the rocks and surrounded by high defensive walls in every direction; plus two other, older forts further up the mountain. We skipped the elephant rides up to the gate owing to a combination of parsimony and a diminished sense of irony. Customers of arranged tours stacked themselves onto the pachyderms as they trudged up the kilometer to the castle gate, pausing only for poop and peanuts – the elephants skipped the peanuts.

Inside the fort, a disproportionate emphasis was placed upon the king’s bathroom arrangements, with their complex water management mechanisms and flushing toilets. Evidently the architect was a master plumber and possibly more imaginative and accomplished three hundred years ago than many of his pipe bending descendants are today.

Back in the city, I strike out for the Palace of the Winds, a smallish (in palace terms) place marked by the most curious façade, overlooking one of Jaipur’s busiest thoroughfares. The front wall is pierced with hundreds of tiny shuttered windows at which the princesses of the court (not otherwise allowed to mix with the proletariat) would sit and watch the comings and goings of the city below, in silent prayer for the imminent invention of satellite television and a more varied menu of light entertainment.

I tried it for twenty minutes and confess to having my fill of cow meets vehicle near miss action stories within the first seven or eight.

Back at the hotel, preparations are well underway for a society wedding. Ours is not the most exclusive residence in town, but surely makes into the top half dozen. Early arriving guests are scattered over the grounds, with the groom’s parents no doubt wondering why they consented to a match sealed in the Sheraton rather than the plusher Taj hotel down the street. Our ‘rick is parked/abandoned right next to the entrance to be used by the wedding party as they enter the property. Non-one has asked us to move it, and I’m not certain that we could if we tried.

In a couple of weeks, after the honeymoon is done, a meeting between the happy couple and the photographer will no doubt center on how a pale blue auto rickshaw can be Photoshop’ed out of its prominent position in the first day of the rest of their lives.

We decide to put the ‘rick on a truck and enlist the help of the hotel. The bargain is quickly sealed – we leave at 6:30am tomorrow morning.

Editorial: The algebra of missing home

Readers of Douglas Adams may recall a theory put forward in his first volume roughly regarding the degree of dislocation one feels from home being directly proportionate to the distance one is separated from it. The further away you are from where you ought to be, the harder the impact of missing it.

Now, Douglas surely concocted this for comedic effect, but I am starting to think that perhaps the deceased humorist was really onto something.

I am accustomed to travelling and being away from home. Yet here, half a world away, the normal tug of home and family are amplified; the anticipated pull being replaced by something much more harsh.

Day 7: Agra to Jaipur ish

This is supposed to be an easy day; a softball; the kind of day one might otherwise decry as lacking in ambition. 225 kilomteters from Agra to Delhi seems like something we could do with one hand tied behind our respective backs. Foolish optimism.

I start the proceedings with a dawn visit to the Taj. It opens at sunrise (6:06 am today), so I saunter up with fifteen minutes to spare, somewhat surprised to find a charrabanc-load of tourists had beaten me to the starting line. We file through the West Gate in close order and gaze upon the pile within.

Readers, if you are not yet convinced that the Taj is worth a look, then I have no words sufficient to convince you otherwise. Take a look at the photos. Better yet, just go.

Careful followers of the narrative may be wondering where Dave is, while I am soaking up the architectural symphonies. In bed is the answer. Suffering sorely from the night before. He may be the only person in recorded history that has gone all the way to Agra and not got within touching distance of India’s favorite edifice because of a hangover

Once we are on the road, I take first stint. Dave sleeps in the back.

The first breakdown happens at the toll booth outside of Fatephur Sikri. We push the beast into town and find a mechanic. With carb cleaned and timing adjusted we are back on the trail with barely ninety minutes wasted – for three kilometers before it breaks down again.

I hitch back into town to find the mechanic again. Surely his repair of twenty minutes ago is still under warranty. The mechanic heads out to our stationary steed and conducts further investigations.

At this point, our story demands some technical details regarding the mechanics of the ‘rick, such as they are. In contrast to an automobile, a rickshaw has no fuel pump. Gasoline (mixed with oil) is dribbled into the engine in the best way that gravity can manage. We had started the race without a cap for the gas tank, but had purchased a replacement in back Varanasi. Our roadside Fatephur mechanic suggested that our new gas cap was simply too good. A rickshaw gas cap *needs* to leak, otherwise a vacuum is formed in the gas tank and no fuel makes it to the engine. In summary, we would be better off without one.

So, with cap in hand, we set off once more.

We make it a further fifty kilometers before the Bjaj dies once more and we push it to a gas station. The mechanic from the next village concludes that things are serious and we set about the process of getting a new cylinder bored. For readers not of a mechanical persuasion, this is a big deal. If you had a car that needed this sort of thing you would probably give up the ghost and buy another one.

Disassembling the engine, boring the cylinder and putting it all back together will take all night. We begin the search for another roadside place to stay while the experts beaver away through the night.

Our heads would rest six kilometers downstream.

Although the insect population was less than the previous  road side stop, the mattress, if anything, was even firmer. There must come a point at which a mattress cannot become any thinner and still be considered worthy of the moniker ‘mattress’. At some point, it becomes so thin that it merely becomes a ‘mat’. Our lodging tested this definition to its limit.

Nevertheless, the food was good, the Kingfisher cold. I slept sound.

Day 6: Agra ish to Agra

Wakefulness comes early. Too early.

I have slept barely a wink on a mattress made of marble, when simultaneously the electricity snaps off (taking the a/c with it) and one of the grasshopper specimens that I share the room with launches itself with suicidal intent at the grimed over window. The power stays off. The a/c remains silent. The remains of the grasshopper lay beneath the window treatments praying for an improved lot come the next round of reincarnation.

Grasshopper mourners gather on my nightstand to ponder the futility of their existence and , reminisce fondly over summers past when they were mere pupae, or eggs, or whatever it is that grasshoppers emerge from.

One particularly prize winning example of the species sticks around on the bed for a while, too overcome for a swift exit. This one is too large and too dignified to jump without good reason and slowly executes a 180 degree turn to face me, individually unfolding and repositioning its six outsize legs with all of the grace and élan that a possessed, and thus independently mobile, grand piano might exhibit during a similar maneuver.

We regard each other for some time with interest. Evidently neither particularly enamored with their lot in life that early morn.

As dawns grey light seeps into the hotel we are off (David and myself. The grasshopper having elected to stick things out at the Gundam), hoping to make Agra by mid-morning.

Make it we do, and roll into the Sheraton with showers foremost in our plans.

Suitably cleaned up we head for the fort and spend a decent amount of the afternoon, tooling around the red edifice taking pictures while our ‘rick is placed into intensive care with a roadside mechanic.

I retire early, while Dave heads out for a night of carousing with the mechanic and his chums.