A Weekend Excursion

I had a weekend! A good one! We did all kinds of crazy things, while avoiding sleep like the plague. And by crazy, I mean pretty not-crazy. We saw some old buildings! Some were big, some were small. We also played with a puppy, and saw several different cows.

The train left the New Delhi Station at 6 am, which means I, at least, got up at 4:15, which is rather early. But it was a beautiful train ride!

[I really need to get another word then beautiful, but everything keeps on turning out to be so? Perhaps real writers use more descriptive words and less vague concepts that carry no imagery or specificity? But I dunno, I'm kind of a fan of vagueity]

The sun rose as we were leaving, and one thing that you can say for excessive air pollution: sunrises are pretty pretty. Everything was bathed in a golden yellow light and the fog/smog made the visibility of the occasional hills and trees and cows more impressionistic than anything else. I mean there were also a few slums we drove past and human suffering and all, but most of the time the view was elegant and ethereal and it was too early to think about that too much. And we drove past villages and mud huts and small cities and larger cities, hill-top temples and one giant figure of a man holding a staff carved out of a giant-dorsal-fin type geological formation/rock hill that I am pretty unable to describe (look for pictures of the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, it was kind of like that). I stayed awake and read and listened to Lou Reed (getting the verse

Because you know what they say about honey bears When you shave off all their baby hair You've got a hairy minded big bare bear

rather frustratingly stuck in my head for the rest of the day) and Nina Simone and watched out the window and thought about things, but at a pretty low level because: sleepiness. I probably should have just slept, but everyone else seemed to be having such a hard time of it. Ally and TK were sitting next to me in a sleep-like state where they'd stay vertical for a little bit, trying to lean back, but then slowly they'd start to fall over and then catch themselves right before falling into the other sleep, and repeat. This cycle took about a minute or so, and was repeated over and over again in a manner that seemed particularly hopeless.

After detraining and riding in a private bus-thing for 45 minutes or so, we arrived in the town of Orccha. It used to be the second capital of some Rajput kingdom that totally started with the letter 'B', and was full of temples and palaces and cenotaphs and about 8 thousand current inhabitants as compared to once-upon-a-time 40 thousand (a number that might very well be terribly inacurate, but anyways it was much bigger in those years is what I gathered). And much of it (volume-wise) is in a fusion of Mughal and classical Indian styles, with hexagons and geometric designs and spires and elephants and lotus flowers all carefully carved in and extremely ornate and intricate. And there is a river running through it that at first glance appears clean! On second and third and so on, this fades, but it is still pretty clean and there were many people happily bathing and swimming around (I was invited by one kid to swim myself, but told him I was just planning on sitting on the bridge and admiring the view, a concept that was somewhat lost on him).

The palace in Orccha was stunning, and I probably preferred it to the Taj Mahal, if only because we were allowed to wander around and climb to the very top and see everything in all directions. The portion that has since been made into a hotel by the Madhya Pradesh tourism board kind of interfered with the view, but their chai was damn good, so I guess that is OK. And the Chaturbhuj temple across the river was fantastic. After getting bindi from the priest, the caretaker noticed us (I think, specifically, noticed us giving too much to the priest, as I was out of small bills), and led us through a locked door and up a flight of stairs and another and another and these stairs: they are quite tall, and quite steep. A dog named Julie also followed along, and snuck into a few of the photos that the caretaker insisted on taking of us at every place where there was a nice view (there were tens of these) all the while (the caretaker, not the dog) saying “Fantaaastic, fantaaaaastic!” And, as little as I enjoy getting my photo taken, it was that.

After a night in Orccha and a little bit more exploring (we tried to go to the jungle sanctuary, but it being midnight a guard from the hotel noticed us going that way and followed us out and told us we couldn't), we went on to Agra, where we stayed in a palatial hotel with shiny marble surfaces and wifi that cost way too much and a jacuzzi that cost money and beds that were extremely comfortable and: hot showers! Sheer luxury. We got in late, though, so all that we ended up doing was watching bits of the Dark Knight and 300 in our shinymarble rooms that evening, hanging out late in a very intelligent move as we were to leave the hotel at 5:30 the next morning.

But then, we left the hotel at 5:30 the next morning and went to the Taj Mahal, catching it just after the sunrise in the soft morning light and before the atmosphere catches fire and your shirt becomes entirely saturated with sweat. The Taj is a very beautiful building; I'm sure you are aware of this. It looks pretty good up close. It was built by Shah Jahan, but the really nice place is actually the tomb of Shah Jahan's father's favorite wife's father, elsewhere in Agra, which is a lot smaller and less imposing but is covered in beautiful floral and ornithological decorations and white marble with inlaid precious stones and paintings and intricacy (the Mughals were all about their intricacy) and even had some monkeys nearby. And then we went and saw the fort in Agra, which had the usually awe-inspiring beauty and intricacy and white marble and deep red sandstone and inlaid precious stones and also some fun acoustical phenomena. And then we went home!

…

It is really pretty difficult to describe all this great architecture, magnificent and ostentatious and just hanging out in the hustle and bustle of modern of India – even in Orccha, a tiny town of 8,000 or so, this was noticeable. You are overwhelmed, impressed, blown-away by the size and intricacy and luxury and beauty, and you feel so very much like a tourist (because, I suppose, you are) engaging with a history that is once intricately connected with Indian Identity and simultaneously kind of not (the Mughals ruled for a very short time relative to the millenia of Indian history that exist, and were, after all, invaders and conquerors), and not engaging with contemporary India as it actually is, and you are shuffled around and paraded around and people want to take pictures with you (this seems to happen with much greater frequency among the women on our program), but the buildings are tall and clean and old and the sunrise is excellent and the monkeys quite cute.

…

Everyone else was taking pictures, so I didn't take too many myself. And then also we still haven't started sharing photos with eachother. Sorry. You could google “Taj Mahal” and “ Chaturbhuj Temple” and all kinds of things – “Mughal Architecture?” I won't show up in any of those results, but feel free to imagine (or photoshop in) my smiling face, slightly disheveled and overheated and sweaty and sleepy but not to the extent that it detracts from the smiley bit. Or cool and contemplative instead of smiley; you could imagine (or photoshop) that too; I am very cool and contemplative. I'm sure photos will at one point or another surface of me and various other members of my group.

[Also, you might have noticed, I am posting this a wee bit late. I think I'm just going to back-date all my posts to when I started writing them?]