Week Eight - The Long Way to Bundi

This week started with both of us waiting for Alessia.

She was landing at 2 a.m. Tuesday, and we spent most of Monday ridiculously excited that she was finally coming. We had missed her so much. She, meanwhile, had been upgraded to business class and was having a considerably more civilized journey than any of us have ever had before the age of 50. By the time she landed, she had already suggested she might never be able to fly economy again.

Great…Twenty years old and already ruined. Jason simply told her to “Stay in School!”

Her first day in Hyderabad was intentionally easy: an Urban Company massage, facials and pedicures with Gen, a trip to House of Stitch for some tailored clothing, Indian food and an early dinner because we were flying to Delhi the next morning.

The beauty treatments were not entirely straightforward. Gen’s were fine. Alessia’s facial mask ended up so thoroughly in her hair that they had to give her an unexpected wash and blow-dry, and someone added thinner to her pedicure polish, which has since been transferring itself onto her shoes and socks. Still, massage, facial, pedicure, custom clothes and Indian food within 24 hours of landing felt like a pretty solid welcome. India had her back.

Wednesday morning we flew to Delhi to start our Rajasthan road trip.

We had specifically requested and paid for an English-speaking driver. He does not speak English.

This became obvious almost immediately when he started calling us from somewhere outside the airport to explain where he was, in Hindi. Thankfully Vishal could translate. The company had also sent us very detailed photos showing exactly where to find him. Gen wanted to follow the photos; Jason’s approach was more or less to walk outside confidently and expect the driver to somehow reveal himself.

The photos won.

Once we found the car, we discovered it technically had five seatbelts but only three functioning places to plug them in. Horrifying by Canadian standards, although we are now used to seeing entire families on motorcycles and quantities of people inside tuk-tuks that seem to challenge both geometry and manufacturer specifications.

Then we caught our driver watching YouTube while driving.

Vishal told him to stop, and Jason spent much of that first night unsuccessfully trying to find another driver or vehicle. In the end we kept him and developed a system involving Google Translate, Vishal, hotel staff and whichever helpful stranger happened to be nearby. He has not watched YouTube again.

The highways themselves have also required some adjustment. In Canada, a divided highway generally means everybody on your side is travelling in the same direction. Here it can feel more like the iphone app - Crossy Road, with cows, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, trucks and the occasional vehicle coming straight toward you because apparently driving the wrong way is easier than waiting for somewhere to cross the median. At one point this weekend, part of the highway was simply closed for a parade. Nobody seemed particularly concerned.

Eventually we arrived in Agra at the Oberoi Amarvilas, which may be the most beautiful hotel we have ever stayed in. Every room really does look directly at the Taj Mahal.

Seeing it for the first time was almost emotional. You know exactly what the Taj looks like before you arrive because you have seen it in thousands of photographs, but somehow none of that prepares you for actually seeing it sitting there in front of you.

At sunset, women danced in the courtyard while musicians played, with the Taj in the distance. Later, calls to prayer drifted through the air. The whole atmosphere felt mystical.

There are places you visit because they are famous and leave thinking, yes, that was impressive. The Taj felt different. It genuinely moved us. It has a presence that is hard to describe without sounding over the top, but it really did feel like it pierced your soul. We immediately understood why it is one of the wonders of the world.

The Oberoi was also committed to making sure nothing interfered with the experience. If your pillow or mattress was not quite right, you could choose a different firmness from the mattress or pillow menu. Yep. You read that correctly - a mattress and pillow menu.

Apparently awe has firmness settings.

Jack ordered pizza in the room. Alessia lay down shortly after we arrived and essentially disappeared until morning, while Jason and Gen snuck downstairs for dinner, including the best dal makhani Gen has had anywhere.

We were up at 5 a.m. and at the Taj by 5:45 for sunrise, feeling quite clever about beating the crowds. Quite a few other people had apparently had the same idea.

Hiring a local guide was one of our best decisions. He knew the history, knew where to take the photographs and, most importantly, was incredibly kind with Jack. Jack was wonderful. He handled the entire morning beautifully, which meant the rest of us could relax and really experience it together, all five of us.

Afterwards we returned to the Oberoi for a huge breakfast and a couple of hours in the pool before starting the long drive toward Jaipur.

On the way we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, the enormous red-sandstone Mughal city built by Emperor Akbar in the 16th century. It was briefly the imperial capital and today feels like an entire royal city sitting empty, with giant courtyards, palaces, gateways and red stone everywhere.

Because it was off-season, we appeared to be among the only Western tourists there, which meant Gen and Alessia became attractions themselves. People repeatedly asked for photographs with them.

At the end we went looking for a bathroom. An attendant produced toilet paper and unlocked a special one for us. We gave him ₹50. Having seen the regular bathroom, where a family was bathing a small child in the sink, it felt like very good value.

The drive to Jaipur took almost eight hours. About an hour outside the city, Jack lost one of his fidgets. We had others, but they were not the right one, and we pulled over for about 20 minutes.

Gen has noticed that Jack also needs Google Maps open whenever we drive so he can see exactly where we are and where we are going. The map gives him certainty, and the fidget is his. On a trip where most other decisions are being made for him, both seem to matter.

What was striking was that only hours earlier he had handled the Taj beautifully. Sometimes the enormous thing is easy and the tiny thing is impossible.

In Jaipur we adjusted. For our main sightseeing days, Jack stayed at the hotel with Vishal while the rest of us explored the city, which worked much better for everyone.

We visited Hawa Mahal, the famous pink façade with hundreds of tiny windows built so royal women could watch the streets below without being seen, and City Palace, still partly a royal residence.

We also went to Jantar Mantar, the 18th-century astronomical observatory filled with enormous stone instruments used to track the sun, stars and planets. It is one of those places that sounds mildly interesting when someone describes it and then becomes much cooler when you are actually standing beside a giant stone instrument built hundreds of years ago to tell time and map the heavens.

The next day we went to Amer Fort, the huge hilltop palace-fort overlooking the surrounding hills. We expected to like the grand courtyards and ornate rooms, but what fascinated us just as much was the plumbing.

There were old systems for moving and storing water, feeding fountains and baths and helping cool the palace long before electricity or modern plumbing existed. We kept finding little channels, pipes and clever ways of managing water and thinking about how advanced the whole place must have been for its time. The practical parts of these old buildings are sometimes more interesting than the throne rooms.

The arrangement with Jack also reinforced something we probably should have figured out years ago: successful family travel does not require every person to do every thing.

Jaipur was also where one of Jason’s favourite photographs happened: a man taking pictures of Gen and Alessia, which had become something of a theme. People would ask to pose with them or simply photograph them, and the picture captured the experience better than another perfect palace shot.

Jason is currently taking photographs of almost everything, although the rest of us have stopped waiting every time he sees an interesting doorway. There was also a puppet show, which received photographic coverage normally reserved for major sporting events.

One of the moments that stayed with us most came from Vishal.

On Sunday morning he went to a service at All Saints Church in Jaipur, built in 1875. It was something he chose to do entirely for himself, and we were happy he had a few hours that were his rather than part of our itinerary.

Later he told us that although he felt blessed to be travelling with us and seeing these places, the kings and maharajas did not really impress him. When he looked at the palaces, he thought about the people who built them. The kings had enormous homes. The people doing the work often had very little.

He had felt the same at the Taj. We were looking at the marble, scale and beauty; Vishal was thinking about how many people it must have taken to build it.

Given his own upbringing, that perspective made sense. He has grown up much closer to the working side of India than we ever will, so when we look at a palace and see the king, Vishal is more likely to notice the people carrying the stone.

It was a simple comment, but it stayed with us.

Meanwhile, back in Hyderabad, our cat Harriet’s tests confirmed she had an E. coli UTI, so Gen was coordinating with the vet and Momi from Rajasthan to add another medication.

Then Puneeth, our landlord, called because the fire alarm was going off in our apartment. Management reported smoke coming from the kitchen and Gen could not reach Momi, which led to several increasingly frantic messages from Rajasthan.

Eventually we figured it out. Momi had left a pot of vegetables on the stove and gone downstairs to walk Leo. The vegetables continued cooking without supervision, and by the time everyone sorted it out, Momi was fine, Leo had completed his walk and the pot had not survived.

Then we arrived in Bundi for two nights.

Bundi is a smaller old Rajasthani city tucked beneath a huge palace and fort climbing up the hillside above it, and almost immediately we loved it.

The streets twist in every direction and somehow accommodate people, cows, pigs, monkeys, dogs, motorbikes and shopkeepers all at once. Tiny stores, blue buildings, temples and vegetable stalls are crammed into narrow lanes, and above the whole thing sit Bundi Palace and Taragarh Fort.

At night, with the palace lit up over the rooftops, it looks completely unreal.

Jason’s description was:

“It’s like every place I’ve ever been to rolled up into a single ball of crazy.”

That is pretty much Bundi.

This afternoon we were wandering through the old streets when we started talking to a shopkeeper. He told us about the festival happening tomorrow and mentioned that women traditionally get henna.

We asked where Gen and Alessia could have it done, and he said his wife could do it right then.

So he led us through a maze of streets to his home, and before long we were sitting on his rooftop with his family while his wife did henna for Gen and Alessia.

No appointment, no guide, no plan. We asked a guy in a shop a question and ended up on his roof.

Then Alessia looked down and noticed her henna included a swastika.

Important India PSA: here it is an ancient Hindu symbol associated with good fortune and prosperity and predates the Nazi symbol by thousands of years.

Alessia’s response was considerably less academic.

Could you make that into a box?

So now it is sort of a box.

And that is where Week Eight ends: Alessia back with us, a non-English-speaking English-speaking driver, the Taj at sunrise, Jack having both an extraordinary morning and a very hard afternoon, 400-year-old plumbing, Vishal looking at palaces from a completely different angle, a small kitchen fire managed from another state, and finally Bundi.

Tonight the palace is glowing above us, tomorrow there is a festival, and Jason has probably found another cow to photograph.

Seeing the Taj Mahal up close for the first time….

Henna on a shopkeeper’s rooftop in Bundi…