Jodhpur

I came back to board the train at around midnight. I had no idea where I was going and as usual manifested that a kind soul would guide my path . The train station, just as it had been in Delhi, was a chaotic refugee camp with people sleeping on the ground and staring at me. I asked a chai vendor for help but he had no English. Fortunately a young Sikh soldier was also queuing for chai and told me he was taking the same train as me. Not only the same train, but the same car, and the same seating area. Luck like that can only come from above. He knew exactly where to stand to get on the right car, something that would’ve left me flummoxed and scrambling given the short waiting period of the stalling train, and guided me in the dark quiet to our beds. It was my first time on a sleeper. The beds were triple deckers. I pulled out my cot and got comfortable, using my sleeping bag as a pillow. I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep fairly easily. In an hour or so a family woke me up to tell me I was in the wrong cot. I climbed up and settled down in the middle cot and fell back asleep, waking up to the morning light that poured into the train as we barreled through the fading green of southern Punjab and into the flat arid shrubbery of Rajasthan.

Everyone folded in their bunks and we sat at the floor level. The family that had woken me the previous night greeted me warmly. The father was another military man, actually he told me he was at one time a wagah border performer, and he had the mustache to prove it. They had a lot of delicious sweets with them that they didn’t mind sharing. So much for my fast. I also had a wonderful chai and breakfast provided by the train. This really wasn’t the nightmare experience I’d been expecting an Indian train ride to be. Of course, it can get worse. I was lucky. No bathroom incidents occurred on the train, my tummer was lulled into a transitory ceasefire. By the end of the ride it felt like I was friends with everyone on my car, we had developed a nice little community, a temporary paradise. The only thing I regret of this itinerary is not going to Bikaner before Jodhpur to visit the rat temple. Maybe next time.

I arrived in Jodhpur around 8PM and all my bicycle fears subsided when I saw my dear old steel friend parked in the parcel office waiting for me, looking as pretty as the day I took her out of the bike shop. Sometimes things do work. Sometimes things are simple. I got on the bike and pedaled the easy few kilometers separating the station from my hostel. Jodhpur was my first proper Rajasthani city, and it didn’t disappoint but it didn’t exactly inspire either. There really just wasn’t all that much to it. If all you need to feel accomplished in life is to see a big old fort, then you’ll be happy in Jodhpur. It also brands itself as “the blue city”. Yeah, so a bunch of houses are painted blue. I don’t know. I wasn’t so impressed. I haven’t been to Morocco or Santorini but I have a feeling those places might have more of a claim to the whole lots of houses painted the same color thing. Anyway, this is the beginning in a long list of observations that have come to the grand realization that I’m just not capable of being a traditional tourist. Museums do very little for me. I just like vibes. I want a cafe with good coffee and pastries and a nice atmosphere. I’ll be happy there. It’ll make me like your city. I don’t need to look at old rocks and stuff. I just can’t seem to make myself care. It’s tragic. But I feel nothing. And yet, time and time again, I still force myself to see these places that I think I’m supposed to see. I don’t know what compels me to do it. I really get nothing out of it but a photo, and the photo always feels superficial. Anyway, in Jodhpur I continued having IBS and I continued eating everything in sight. What can I say? This is the new paradigm. I went to see the big old fort on the hill. It was fine. Nothing to be in too much awe of. I met some nice people and hung out with them. The most notable of these acquaintances was a British Indian named Nihal who was motorbiking through some portion of India. He was good vibes and we did some exploring together. Somehow we ended up joining an insufferable posh british guy who I didn’t like and Nihal hated. Being in India is teaching me much more about the nuances of British people than I ever want to know. I will definitely have to visit that island at some point. The posh are really something, but still not as a bad as posh Americans. I did run into Gatien the French guy from Dharamshala, that was a wonderful surprise. We met at a cafe while I was finishing my open letter to global jewry concerning Gaza. That letter failed its objective. At that time, only 10,000 people had been killed, which felt like a huge number. As I write, the toll stands at 30,000. I was under no illusion, of course, that my words (a mere drop in the ocean of op eds and infographics and social media posts) would have any effect, but it served as a good vehicle to flesh out my own thoughts on the matter which have evolved considerably. Gatien and I dined on some rooftop restaurant or another, the city was pretty at night and the fort was well lit and prominent in the desert, sometimes it feels like you’re actually somewhere interesting. But we will never scratch the itch that Hollywood gave us about foreign places. Rajasthan is supposed to evoke that old decadence of Indian royalty, street side musicians on the flute and tabla and red turbans and camels. But it’s like anything else. It’s been extracted for its charms and served to tourists in an easy concentrated way, buried in the monotonous mayhem that is India. But it’s beauty was there, and you could imagine it as it was before. Before the British Raj and industrialization and plastic waste and motorcycles. It could have been glorious. Imagine people actually walking down those beautiful step wells to retrieve their water. Seeing these old palaces and forts without having to compete with thousands of tourists taking selfies and talking loudly. But that will never happen. We are left with the crumbs of history.