Kundalini

India- January 2017- country of extremes, incredible history-trip filled with knowledge and experiences

Old Delhi and New Delhi have a combined population of 25 million. Jami Masjid is a mosque, built in the 16th century where 25,000 people can fit inside the courtyard. Three domes denote that it is an active mosque and 1 dome that it is a mausoleum. We went to Chandi Chowk, meaning ‘courtyard’ a local bazaar, by rickshaw. There was much poverty seen-children sleeping in carts, people with missing limbs, homeless and hungry people. Monkeys skirt inside the city on the overhead lines. Delhi can have a pollution index of up to 800 and as a result 1/5 children have respiratory difficulties.

Udaipur

,is the city of marble palaces whose king refused alliances with the Mughals. Every city has a king who has no real power in this new century. We paid a visit to a local artist at his art workshop, viewing his creations, paintings called miniatures. He teaches others at no charge. I bought one piece picturing a horse (strength), camel (love) and elephant (luck). The miniature paintings are painted with colours created from minerals and vegetables which never fade and the one I purchased is backed with a mixture of limestone and acrylic. All of the proceeds are shared among the community of artists, no matter who created the piece.

We visited the City Palace built in 1559, overlooking the man-made Lake Pichola. There’s a City Palace legend that the God, granted the King’s wish of a palace, but the palace was to always remain under construction, never was finished and never will be. The different parts of the palace reveal different influences such as that of the British. The narrow passages and steep staircases were created to confuse invaders and the courtyards sport mirrors/glass and mosaics.

A boat ride took us to Lake Palace, which sits in the middle of the lake, a past royal summer retreat and now one of the world’s great hotels and location of film shoots. Jagish Manor (Hindu) built in 17^th century is flanked by stone elephants. We came across the Folk Art Museum which was old and uncared for but we were able to see how simply created their folk art was. Lastly, we were driven to a store selling jewellery, tailoring and bedding. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was filmed 130 km from Udaipur and the costumes were created by the above place. They know how to sweet-talk a woman- I was told that I was a young Judy Dench – ha! And so I ended up with a beautiful Judy Dench cashmere blazer. It is quite exquisite!

The drive to Pushkar was interesting as I viewed the change in the countryside on the way to Pushkar, a city nestled around 3 landscapes, water, mountains (little ones) and a lake. Pushkar hosts a Fair which is one of Asia’s largest cattle fairs. This city of 20,000 is built around a lake and brags 1300 temples. We soon learned that orange is a Holy colour for Hindus and green for Muslims. We stayed in a most unusual hotel (the photo below is of the light switches in our room) and took a 45 minute camel ride to view the sunset in the desert. The gypsy caravan in the desert was a little overwhelming. Sandra, one of the girls was riding on the side of her camel most of the way out there and managed to convince the guide to adjust her saddle for the return trip. Sandra provided us with laughs every day. Next we visited ‘Brahma Temple’- the only in India dedicated to the God Brahma. We took a three hour walk through the bazaar around the lake. As a result our driver kept calling the guide to see when we would make it back. It was a most interesting bazaar. Our guide, Raju, had incredible patience for the shoppers in our group.

Hal Mahal Water Palace’ has three stories built under water in the mid18^th century and inspired by Lake Place in Udaipur. Pushkar is one of three largest ornament making centers in India. Wow, to be rich-there was handmade silver jewellery in amounts that I’ve never witnessed in one place before.

Next, we drove to Jaipur the “Pink City’. We marveled at the “Palace of the Winds” Harva Mahal, the old walled city, the museum of the “Court of the Beloved” which has four painted doorways representing each of the 4 seasons and houses the largest silver object (urns) in the world. The king lives in a part of this palace today.

Jantar Mantar is the largest stone observatory in the world built in 1728 having 16 instruments of which some are still used to forecast how hot, summer months will be/duration and the intensity of the monsoon. Rashivalaya Yantra representing each of the 12 pieces of the zodiac are all facing a different constellation and used by astrologers to this day, to draw up horoscopes.

We drove up to Amber Fort, in a jeep rather than by elephant, built in 1621 and added onto an old 11^th century fort. We next visited the ‘Palace of Mirrors’ – Sheesh Mahal – a gateway built in 1640 with an entrance “Sun Gate” and “on the opposite side (exit) Moon Gate”.

Next, I saw miles of marble on our way to our next destination, the long awaited Agra, on February 3^rd. Agra was the seat of the imperial Mughal court in the 16/17^th century and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. There we visited Taj Mahal, on our way Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri. We were happy to have the Taj as one of our last visits as everything else would have paled in comparison. Taj, a garden tomb-the image of Islamic garden of paradise, was built in memory of the Mughal Emperor’s favourite wife costing 500 kilos of gold using 20,000 workers, taking 12 years to complete. It measures 70 metres with a 3 metre bronze spire. It reflects into the lotus pool named after the lotus shaped fountains spouting over the replicas of the tombs. Calligraphic panels are the size of Koranic verses and increase to give illusion of uniformly flowing script made of black marble. The carved floral designs contain inlaid precious stones in the recessed arches with inlaid panels that reflect the light. The art work is in the Florentine technique ‘pietra dura’ imported and developed in Agra as pachikari. The stones used are carnelian, lapis lazuli, turquoise and malachite. The baby Taj from which the Taj idea evolved from, marks the transition from sandstone to marble. It too, has stone inlay, latticework and colored mosaics.

We returned to Delhi for our flight and visited Qutab Minar, , the highest single tower, marking the site of the first Muslim kingdom in North India dating back to 1193 held inside the Mehrauli archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Monument. Lotus Temple, and Raj Ghat the site of Gandhi’s cremation were both stops that we also made along the way. I returned with many memories.