Tour-de-Rajasthan

This Christmas I was on an excursion to Rajasthan with my college buddies. We visited Udaipur, Chittaurgarh and Jaipur as a part of our three day tour. Though, at the end of the tour, we felt that three days were not enough to visit the important historical places in these cities.

Udaipur is a fantastic place with beautiful lakes, palaces & hills. It is a source of inspiration & imagination for poets, writers & thinkers like me. As the name of the town suggests, it was founded by Maharana Udai Singh. The main attraction in Udaipur are City Palace, Pichhola lake and Saheliyon-Ki-Bari. Though the town has seven lakes, the Pichhola lake is most beautiful among them.

The Hotel White Palace in the midst of Pichhola Lake.

Anupam – finding music in broomstick.

Saheliyon-Ki-bari was built by some Mewar Maharana for the then Maharani and their saheliya for strolling. It has many fountains & pools. It is a nice place to hang out to.

Front and Back of City Palace.

After spending more than 24 hours in Udaipur, we were off to Chittaurgarh – the pride & glory of Rajasthan. It echoes the tales of romance and bravery of Rajputs. It is a small town situated on the back of Chittaurgarh fort. The fort is now ruined. Well, it deserves the history – how it was ruined, perhaps. Here is it.

This fortified settlement has been ravaged thrice and each time the outcome was ‘Jauhar’-when women and children immolated themselves on a huge funeral pyre while men donned in saffron robes of martyrdom rode out of the fort towards a certain death.

Alauddin Khilji was the first to sack Chittaur in 1303 A.D. overpowered by a passionate desire to possess the regal beauty, queen Padmini. Legend has it, that he saw her face in the reflection of a mirror and was struck by her mesmerising beauty. But the noble queen preferred death to dishonor and committed ‘Jauhar’. The number of women and children committed Jauhar was around 15000 this time.

In the fortress of Chittaurgarh

Myself, Anupam & Angshuman in Rajasthani Costume.

The victory tower of Chittaurgarh

Now we headed to Jaipur, the pink city. There is a story how we could get rooms in a hotel in Jaipur that also during the Christmas – New Year season. We could reach Jaipur at around 2 am and after hanging out from one hotel to another for around 2 hours, ultimately we got rooms of triple the price. This explains how important Jaipur is, as a tourist place.

At the amber fort, we came to know how the then prime minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi recovered a mammoth treasure and perhaps a part of which still has no account. We couldn’t visit Hawa Mahal and other important places as we ran out of time and the guide (as he described himself), we hired was not professional & witty person.

The Birla Temple in Jaipur

As the final front of our tour, we headed to “Chokhi Dhani”. It is the place which reveals the art, culture, costume and other traits of India and especially Rajasthan. There we had traditional Rajasthani dinner. The other attraction includes the shows by the Magician, the artists proving why they are ‘Jadugar’ in their fun and the dancers with a series of pitchers on their head.

Well, I forgot to mention about an important character of the tour. We called him ‘Sonu Bhaiya’. He was the driver of the van we hired. He is very professional and serious towards his duty. While we were near to Delhi, the road was grabbed by the dense horrid fog. The situation was so abysmal that we couldn’t see even two meters away. We also faced a minor accident. Thanks god, nobody was seriously injured. It was an insurmountable situation for sonu bhaiya to drive the van safely to our abode. As I have already told, sonu bhaiya is a professional, he did his job successfully.

Finally I would like to thank the PM of our Tour-de-Rajasthan, ‘Biswa’ or ‘Bhagwanji’. He managed the tour from start to end. Though he had to miss the tour in midst, he had proved why he deserves to be a Manager.

The mates of Tour-de-Rajsthan

Note: The italic words are taken from the website http://www.rajasthan.gov.in/CHITTAURGARH.SHTM. One sentence or the way it is used is taken from Sudipta’s blog. Again the idea of this topic is taken from sudipta’s blog. Thank you sudipta. The last three photos were edited by Anupam. I took them from his Orkut Album.

Liar Liar

I remember a tale on Gandhiji. Once he was going by a street. He saw of cow passed by him. After sometime a butcher also passed by him. The butcher paused and asked Gandhiji whether he saw any cow. To save the life of the cow Gandhiji lied. He gave his answer in negative. This was not the first incident when Gandhiji lied, whether for good or bad. OK, It was Gandhiji, whose armory was loaded with the mighty weapons of Satya and Ahinsa. But we are no Gandhiji not even a percentage of Gandhiji when we talk of Satya.

At present time our day starts with lie & ends with lie. Almost every member of our society is habitual of lying. The student lies to the teacher about homework. He lies to the parents about activities in school and the final report. Not only a student of school level, a graduation student when starts smoking & consuming alcohol, he keeps it secret from parents. Again a working bachelor has reasons to lie about for the same reason. They lie about their friends & colleagues to parents. A person in police custody lies to escape the punishment. The lawyer lies to provide his client an acquittal. The milkman lies of purity of milk. Naina (she is our maid) has a number of reasons for her absence on previous days. I lie to boss (here the boss is my senior, whom I report to. And not that Brother Of … …) about my absence from office. Several professions are meant for lie & lie, e.g. politics, business, police…… Almost every advertisement on television is more or less lying about their product. Every other soap is best. Every other shampoo is most powerful & charismatic. Every news channel is number one news channel.

I am not saying that everyone who lies is wrong. But lying has become a routine of our daily life. We can’t give it up even after we try to. Ok, where there is a will, there is a way. But this is applicable in selected special cases & not in general. No, I don’t have negative thought. I am talking of daily routine of a man. Moral of the story is that we can’t leave lying. But there is a section in this society which is refrained from such habits of lying. I want to join this club. I will inform you after getting admission to this club. If you are also willing to join this very club, contact me – prav@anyWhereInIndia.