Jaipur, The Pink City of India
What a crazy day!! Day one of Jaipur and I am already so glad to be in Rajasthan and away from the total insanity of Delhi. We had a blast and worked hard, and now the sightseeing, relaxation and photos for myself begin..
We started our day eating lunch at this very quaint backyard courtyard of a nearby bed and breakfast. We were the ONLY people sitting there and eating for over an hour and only shared our space with their resident peacock. We sat in these throne-like chairs under a pagoda and had the place to ourselves. The food was all vegetarian and AMAZING. Such a quiet, calm experience in the heart of a bustling, chaotic city.
We then went to the sacred monkey temple, which is an old palace with a cistern that is completely overrun with tribes of monkeys and wild holy cows. It is built into the steep rocky cliffs of a mountainside and you have to pretty much hike up this curved, steep rocky path to get to the view and temples at the top; passing random homes, shanty’s that are makeshift shrines and homes for holy men (and pretty much an area where they don’t care if you smoke weed, since all of the holy men do that all day). As we hiked and took photos and had monkeys jumping on top of our heads, we got asked to sit and join a holy man in his home for a while. We sat on the floor and watched him pray and smoked with him and he let us take some of the coolest photos of him. Other foreigners walked by and we invited them to come join us and soon we had packed this little man’s one room shack and were all passing a clay pot of hash around. Such a chill experience. Trying to hike after that was difficultJ
I have been practicing finding stillness in chaos while here in India. Opening my heart, being grateful, lucky, and still having hope for love, adventure and a long life of happiness.
When we left our driver said that we had to go visit this famous mosque on the way to Pushkar called Ajmer Kalif Dargha. Sarah and I didn’t realize that we were about to have one of the most surreal experiences of our lives. We stopped at this village, built like a medieval labyrinth with a mosque sitting up high on the mountain overlooking the entire village with tall walls and narrow passageways, some wide enough for just a donkey cart only and STILL with two way traffic. It was insane. When our driver said we couldn’t get there by car, we didn’t understand why until we got there and were ambushed by hoards of men fighting over which tuk tuk would take us up to the mosque. We then proceeded to speed our way through the streets narrowly escaping our deaths a few times with head on collisions with holy cows in the street and motorcycles, almost running over school children and muslim women in burkas, and being gawked at because we were white, women, and showing too much skin since my long dress had a slit in it. I have never felt like a slut before, but the way the men shook their heads at me when they saw the slit in my skirt (the dress you ripped the slit in when we were dancing in that street party in St. Lucia…Yep, we never fixed itJ little did I know it would be the source of my shame in India one day it was unnerving.
When we made it up to the mosque, we were covered in ornate sarongs, and given a flat basket filled with flower petals to balance on our heads and walk through the mosque, through narrow passageways and doorways eventually to end up in a crowded room full of men fighting to make offerings at their shrine and circling like it was the Indian Mecca. Sarah and I were shoved underneath a blanket amidst the crowd, one that would have caused a panic attack for most people and then our heads held together and prayed over. It was so loud and chaotic and crowded and in that surreal moment of “How the fuck did I get here?” I closed my eyes and my mind and I found stillness and calm. I was able to shut it out and think of happiness, of life and love and family. I found a stillness and it felt so good like I had made some kind of breakthrough in my life. I was so present in certain ways and just trying to take it all in. I didn’t have my camera on me and I was just trying to wrap my head around this insane experience that even these words don’t give any weight to.
