Jaipur to Udaipur With Two Flat Tires

On our last night in Jaipur I woke up in the middle of the night with a hair-brained idea. Why drive a third of the way to Udaipur the following day to see some major sites, as we had planned, then drive all the way back, pack, have dinner, and then take the overnight train to Udaipur, arriving at 6 a.m., when we could drive to the sites we wanted to see and then just keep going by car to Udaipur? Ross liked the idea and by 9 a.m. we'd changed our plans and were on our way to Udaipur with yet a third driver, Ashu, a cousin of the other other two drivers, Awad and Raja. The car was a bit run down and slow, but Ashu was a good guy, spoke tolerable English, and seemed to drive well. And the highway out of Jaipur was a good one. But then, about an hour into our drive, we had a flat tire. No problem. Ashu pulled over, unloaded all the baggage, took out the spare, and changed the tire. While he was doing so Ross pointed out to me that the left front tire had very little tread and we both just shrugged.

An hour or so later after driving through flat countryside mostly planted to mustard, which grew in sheets of bright yellow from each side of the road, we passed through a spectacularly busy area full of large marble slab merchants where the traffic in cars, trucks, camels, people, and herds of goats was chaotic. Once we punched through the congestion we began to climb into high desert terrain that reminded both of us of the landscape between Albuquerque and Santa Fe in New Mexico. All of the way the traffic was harrowing, roads congested with cars and huge trucks and buses, two lanes, one each way, but shared in a chaos of outragous passing gambits that seemed like games of chicken. I've gone through this before in India but this bordered on the truly terrifying. One has to learn the system here and then it's not so bad. Driving in India is a cooperative social exercise. Signs on the back of trucks say “Please Honk” because they want to know you're behind them and want to pass. When you do pass and face an oncoming truck things look ominous, but the oncoming truck always slows down so you can get around (the guy driving the truck doesn't want to die any more than your driver does), or it shifts over to the side of the road. Everyone looks out for everyone else, they slow, shift, pull over, and never get mad. Once you get it you can calm down and read your Lonely Planet guide to Udaipur on your iPad, which I did later in the trip.

Another hour or so into our drive we found ourselves on a winding high-desert road where there was enough water to grow wheat in a tranquil, hilly landscape of small villages and farms. People rode camels along the roadside and some pulled carts full of building supplie or tools. Our destination was an old Jain temple near a town called Pushkar, where there was also an important temple devoted to Brahma, the only such temple in India. We pulled into the sandy parking area of the Jain temple and spent about a ½ hour enjoying the place. It was mostly abandoned, but there where clusters of people meeting together with priests performing some kind of ritutal. We returned to the car to press on to Pushkar only to be greeted with the news from our driver that we had another flat tire. It was that bald left-front tire, of course. Off it came, our driver hopped into someone's car, said he'd be back when he got it fixed, drove off, and there we were stranded alone in the high hot Rajasthani desert with all of our bags locked in the car. I made the best of it by wanderng around taking pictures and chatting as best I could with some of the local guys playing cards, while Ross hung around the temple. Nearly an hour later, at a moment when we were beginning to wonder what our back-up plan ought to be, the driver returned, the repaired tire was remounted (with some effort, for the wet sand ground didn't hold the jack very well), the bags returned to the trunk, and we were off again and heading toward Pushkar, so glad to be on our way that we quickly forgot the whole episode.

The big pay-off for all our troubles came when we arrived in what turned out to be the dazzling holy city of Pushkar, one of the most wonderful places I've visited in India. Pushkar is a small town organized around the Brahma temple, which has apparently been here for centuries (the story is that the god Brahama visited Pushkar and decided to stay for good, hence the temple). It's easy to see why he stayed. The town is built around a small, beautiful lake with ghats where people bathe and take the sun. The main street (or margh) winds from the automobile entrance to the temple entrance, with beautiful shops and small restaurants and cafes along the way. I thought the goods for sale here were far more attractive than what I'd seen in Jaipur and I regretted that we had to rush through town so quickly. There wasn't time for shopping. Here, as in Varanasi, many of the Europeans and Americans were dressed in pseudo-Indian garb, scarves and pajama pants and tie-died blouses and shirts, with long hair or dreadlocks. There were many hippie parents with their somewhat bemused children and people my age who seem still to be living in the 1960s. The town was of course full of Rajasthanis going to market or just buying supplies, lovely, elegant people who made the streets seem graceful and serene. The areas bordering the lake were particularly beautiful, with what seemed like palaces in the distance shimmering their reflection in the lake, and hordes of pigeons everywhere. Of course like everywhere in India their were entrepreneurs of every kind at work, sadhus in elaborate garb and painted faces carrying begging tins posing for pictures they charged for, shopkeepers agressively eager to get you into their shops, and young men hanging around near the temples who offered flowers to tourists. The deal was you were to take the flower to a priest who would dot your forehead with ash and then you'd leave the flower as an offering, paying both the priest and the boy. When I demurred from following this routine I was berated more than once for not showing respect for the temple. One has the feeling of being constantly hassled, whether in the bazaars or at the temples. But people have to make a living and so you understand and deal with it. My choice is to make big donations now and then at temples that help the poor. If you gave money to everyone who asked for it or needed it, you'd be broke after the first couple of days.

The rest of the drive to Udaipur was long and tedious, but uneventful compared to what had come before. All the guidebooks say not to drive at night in India but actually it's the safest time, at least on the larger highways, because few people are on the road. We stopped once at a roadside restaurant for soup but other than that drove straight through to Udaipur, arriving about 12 hours after we'd left. It was worth the drive, both for seeing the landscape of Rajasthan, Pushkar, and arriving in Udaipur at 9 at night rather than 6 the following morning. And we were ecstatic at what we found, a beautiful lakeside hotel, a huge room with large windows opening onto the lake with pillows and pads for sitting beneath them, and a expansive outdoor garden restaurant on the lake with dazzlying views across to the old city and it's Palace. We felt like we'd arrived in a medeival hilltown in Italy, a resort in Switzerland, or Venice. Udaipur is a little bit of each when seen from this point on the lake shore, and it is as serene a place as one could imagine. I've written often about how noisy India is but this place can be nearly silent. Right now I'm writing this at an outdoor table at the restaurant looking across the lake at the palace and the mountains in the distance on a hot, sunny afternoon, and all I can hear are the sounds of a few crows, the whirring of a boat motor in the far distince, and the soft clanking of silverware and quite chatting from the tables behind me.