You probably saw this picture of our dinner venue over the lake in Udaipur.

This could be a beautiful place someday.

While here we hired a car and driver and toured out to two sites in Rajasthan.   We are only one state away from the Pakistan border and everyone here is Muslim. Security is persuasive and serious.

This is a dry, denuded, barren area. Almost all of the trees have long since been cut down. And it is depressing to see the continuing pressure on the land: many people collecting branches off the living trees, along with bushes, sticks, leaves, any kind of potential fuel.

We travelled part way on a new (6 years old) divided highway, which was a surprise. But mostly on the narrow, one car wide typical country roads.

We encountered dogs, cows, camels, wild pigs, monkeys, cars, four wheels, tuc-tucs, busses, bullock carts .. The fields are small and hand cultivated although we did see a few tractors.

It seems to me that the severe denudation of the land is from the dryness, the press for fuel and the intensive goat farming. The latter so destructive to foliage. (I did have some goat curry the other evening though and somewhat understand.)

Some roadside notes: Lots of brick construction (no wood), and here is a brick works.

Although the place is very desert like there are streams and they use bullock driven pumps to lift water into their fields. Here is a (poor) picture.

They also collect dung for fuel. They hand shape it into patties, which is disconcerting the first time you see it being done. They dry the patties in the sun and then store them near the house in a pile with a straw roof to keep it dry. Here is a boy with some wet ones.

One destination was to visit a hill fort of the Mewari. Built in the mid 1400’s. Up on a plateau, two and a half miles of walls and cliffs enclosed 32 square miles.

Also went to another mid 1400 site, a marble temple, very holy to the Jain religion. To enter had to take off shoes and leave behind any leather articles (cows are sacred), belts, wallets, whatever.

The roads were impossibly narrow through some villages, but that can be said for Italy and France too. But these villages are amazingly dirty. Buildings half constructed, buildings falling down, bad shops and eateries, cow poop, trash of all kinds, piles of rocks and all kinds of building materials, plain old dirt everywhere. To be fair though the amount of people poop is substantially down from what I remember from 30 years ago. But it is part of the mix.

600 million Indian people poop outside every day.

People are everywhere you look. Not crowds, just everywhere, doing some farm or other work. Or, inexplicably walking in very remote places, or sitting on a rock beside the road high on a hill, or a family camping in a field. The women wear very brightly colored dresses. They carry amazing loads on their heads. Water in metal containers, baskets of leaves and twigs, branches, baskets of gravel, bundles of straw …

 

A note on having and having not.

We talked with some people staying at the Oberoi.

 

I used to stay at the Taj and Oberoi hotels, venerable Indian hotel chains on business years ago. They were expensive then. They are breathtakingly expensive now. And today there are plenty of choices:   good local hotels and international chains. One night at either of the former in Udaipur, in one of the less expensive rooms will not leave you with little change from a thousand bucks. We are not staying there.

But that got us discussing.

India is poor. 20 % of the population of the country cannot make enough in a year and 50% of the population cannot make enough in a month to stay in one of these hotels.

Here is our hotel. Pretty, but only just comfortable.

But we have hot water, clean towels, a comfortable bed, aircon heat, a pool, very good restaurants. We climb up to the top of our hotel. On the rooftops surrounding us all manner of living is going on. One yard just off our room has chickens. A troop of monkeys is on the other side.

Two goats are on one rooftop. And, just across is a large operation drying dung patties. This is in the best part of town.

Everywhere we have been there are women who continuously sweep the gutters and edges of the street. With the poorest of brooms. Twig bundles. They sweep into piles and then bring along barrows and collect the piles. And the amount of litter and garbage and bad stuffthey collect  is incredible. I thought that they were the poorest of the poor. But then realized that they have jobs. The really poor are moving around with one piece of cloth around them and their belongings in a bundle.  Individuals and whole families.

This monumental amount of poverty especially with comparative (and real) wealth and luxury right along-side is very hard to reconcile. I could write more on this and perhaps will some later time.

Walked around the old town this morning and post here a collection of street scenes. (for anyone who has not seen enough of these)