Edible Fortresses

The staff here at Phases Crossed is thankful to our readers' kind patience, knowing full well that patience is one of our world's few non-renewable resources. We will spare no expense in bringing you editions of Phases Crossed on time, however, no matter how remarkable the technologies required. We have gotten our hands on so called "time travel" technology, and are able to retroactively backdate issues, as you see here, with as much ease as a publicly owned company can backdate stock options. While your present day selves have patiently been waiting for the next installment for quite some time, your past selves are already satisfied. You can think of it as a little like the retro-active amnesia drugs you may have had for your wisdom teeth removal, but operating in reverse. in reverse. in reverse. in reverse. Never mind. The risks inherent in distorting the fabric of internet space-time -- think big black holes capable of sucking down our entire galaxy -- are small, when compared with the satisfaction we can bring to our many readers, or at least their temporally past selves.

Indian adventurers know that an important part of any trip to India is riding the buses, which are important sites of physical and mathematical research. In ancient times, Indian philosophers discovered & developed the concept of Zero. In modern times, armed with one of the world's largest populations, Indian mathematicians are pursuing advanced studies in large numbers. India is so big, and so overwhelming, that they have entirely new kinds of numbers to describe the magnitudes at play here, like lakh (100,000) and crore (100 lakh). The buses are practical experiments with notions of compactification and infinity.

An Indian bus, you see, can never be full. You can always put more people on a bus. For an Indian bus to be full is a practical and theoretical impossibility, as highly reproducible experiments all over India have shown, time and time again. People can go on the roof of the bus, on other people, or in the null space between two people. Just when you think -- "wow, this bus is ridiculously full, nobody else could possible get on and fit anywhere" -- 1 crore more people board the bus.

But this is where the fun starts. The excitement really takes off when you take this bus, and ride it at night, when all the nocturnal goods transport trucks come out, each with a driver specially trained in the Indian arts of highway navigation. The only rule on an Indian highway is to get there first, and pass whenever you can, or, if that fails, pass whenever you can't. You can pass someone on the shoulder's highway, which isn't paved, but open land. You can pass in the oncoming traffic lane, even if it has someone coming right at you. The trick, as a passenger, is to not look, because every few seconds your bus is heading directly into the face of an oncoming truck. With only inches to spare, and your life passing before your eyes, your bus narrowly passes back into its lane, and you narrowly escape death -- at least for another five seconds, when it's time to pass again. It's a good time.



One of the first things I notice as we get close to Jodhpur is how all the rickshaws here are like stretch limo versions of rickshaws in the rest of India. Maybe it's for all the royalty who live in the castles here.

Jodhpur

The work of angels, fairies and giants... built by Titans and coloured by the morning sun... he who walks through it loses sense of being among buildings. It is as though he walked through mountain gorges... -Rudyard Kipling

We arrive late at night in Jodhpur, and catch a rickshaw to Yogi's Guest House. I immediately like Yogi after I first talk to him over the phone to make the reservation. He calls me "brother", and tells me how to handle the rickshaw drivers, suggesting we take a rickshaw to a nearby commission paying guest house, which will get us a bargain on the ride, and then walk over to him, where he can "deal with the bastard." Although I'd like to help dish out some righteous revenge to a scheming rickshaw driver, it's almost midnight, and I'd rather just go to bed. It's a nice guest house, with a great view of the fort towering overhead, Mehrangarh. Yogi is super sweet, and has lived in San Francisco for a few years, so his soul is partially Californian, and Yogi, the man, is immediately likable. The rooftop restaurant has terrific views of the fort, which we get a feeling for, even in the dark.



Here is Alex, at peace, in the guest house. We are treated to two days of overcast weather, and even a bit of rain, making our trip is this desert empire a little easier on the eyes, skin, and suntan lotion.



Floating above us is a boy's dream, built by angels and giants, the desert fortress Mehrangarh. We go to sleep, knowing that tomorrow we will wake up and unwrap this most awesome present. Two things must be remembered: It's dark when we first see it, so it's lit only by moonlight. Also, it's huge. It's so much huger than it seems in this picture. This will be made clear later when we have better scale referents. This photo is from the guest house rooftop.



Alex didn't sleep that well, and is understandably slow, but I'm super excited to go out and explore. I keep saying: "I hear there's a giant awesome fortress out there!"



As we get closer, we start to realize how hard it's going to be to follow our original plan of sneaking in, scaling the walls, or a frontal attack. We decide to switch to Plan B: enter through the front gate, and buy a ticket. The accompanying audio guide is highly awesome. Alcatraz is hard to get out of. Mehrangarh is hard to get into. But both have excellent audio tours.

On the way in, we see a power generator with Om written on it. It's not making Ohms, but spiritual power, of some sort. Perhaps this is the secret to the Rajput's success in fending off the Muslim Mughal empire from this part of India. There's a whole Om/Ohm life cycle at play in India. Later in our trip, we find a hydropower plant with a Shiva temple inside, presumably using Om to generate Ohm.



This is part of the approach to the front door. Notice how it winds around and around, like an intestine maximizing surface area to the digestive walls of the castle. This should be an obviously optimal strategy to players of Tower Defense. Apparently it's smart to put doors with short approaches to them, so elephants can't build up too much speed and knock them down.



All the canons in the fort are whimsically decorated like this. I mean fiercely. Fiercely whimsical. Um, or, whimsically fierce. That's it. On the ramparts are a collection of international canons the Rajputs took from various parts of the world as war booty while helping the British.



This place makes me super happy.



This is a view down the man made canyon of the fort's front approach.



Those with good eyes will notice the dominance of the color blue. The fortress is surrounded by a city that is painted mostly blue. It's very pretty.



If you can build a fort like this, you can build rooms like this for your royal party to party in.



And if you're going to ride elephants, you need to do it in style.



We finally scale the walls, walk around the battlements, and find that our princess is another castle. If you look closely, you can see how older crenelation (the teeth on top of castle walls) has been built over, to make even taller walls and towers. Standing on top of the battlements does remarkable things to your hearing. It's as if you can hear whispers from any part of the city below. If you ever wanted to know what Superman feels, or hears like, come to Jodhpur.



We find a nice temple. So do some birds.



And the Indiana Jones-es are off to rescue more princesses, from more castles, much like Mario. Mario Jones. Or something. We have a late night train, so we wait along with lots of other people in the lobby of the train station. Many Indians like to sleep on the floor when they wait for night trains.



Jaisalmer

We set out for Jaisalmer and more delicious eyeball treats (mmm), and apple pie. We hear they have really good apple pie. The only train, unfortunately, leaves at midnight or so, and gets there at 5 am. This is a small sleep bummer.

This is the first part of India where we start to see lots of army folks around, probably because we are getting close to Pakistan. On the train we meet some nice officers, who are extremely friendly and well educated. Officers get to ride AC, but enlisted men must go normal sleeper class.

Ahead of time, I've booked a room in a mid range place called Shahi Palace, on a tip that you can get a budget priced room from them. They pick us up at 5am from the train station, which is super convenient, and give us a room to nap in, which is super sweet. Of course, everyone has an angle. They put us in a nice room later, at a good price (350Rs), and try to sell us a camel trek, no doubt on a nice commission. When we plan our camel trek, they promise us the same room, same rate, when we return. Surprise! When we return, later, the room has been taken by someone else -- a 1% chance, we were promised; a minor miracle, I point out to the owner -- and only a more expensive room is available. Alas. We are told by the hotel's unctuous owner that we should not tell anyone who we booked our trek through, since it's bad for his own business. We'll tell you in an upcoming edition... The small guest house empire the owner operates has really nicely designed rooftop restaurants, with great views of the fort. The food is terrible, the Lonely Planet warns us. We figure -- how badly can someone mess up breakfast, fried eggs and such? Incredible India never stops amazing us. It's a great guest house, except for the lousy food, and the jerk owner. But, if you know what you're getting involved with, it's a convenient and cheap way to enter Jaisalmer.

Oh yeah, so what is Jaisalmer? Why do people come all the way to the edge of India, the edge of the desert's border with Pakistan? What's here? Two things, mostly: an awesome fort that the Lonely Planet describes as delicious, made of gingerbread, or something like that, and camel treks. Really, I think it's made of sandstone, and it looks golden. From the blue city to the gold one. The fort, besides tasting great, is also a functioning city, albeit a mostly tourist oriented city. The LP doesn't list guest houses in the fort anymore, since there's some kind of sewage load management problem, and the fort's bastions are collapsing. The water is eating away the sandstone foundations.



The fort is large, and it's hard for me to give you a good visual picture of it. It is surrounded by these round towers and walls, and rises up out of the surrounding landscape. If you look closely, or click through, you can see the government authorized bhang shop in the photo above. Also nearby the fort's entrance is a German bakery with mind numbingly good food. We have the best apple pie on planet earth here. It's in all the space alien's travel books. Lonely Galaxy is one of the most popular. We return later for more, but the tourist season is coming to a close, as the temperatures are heating up, so no more pie is in the works. It is a bittersweet realization that we had but one slice of the final, and most delicious, apple pie of the season.



Above is one of the gates you pass through to enter the fortress city.



Here is a large picture which helps me emphasize how the fort is large. But not too large. You can learn to get around the place in a few hours. This photo is taken from one of the towers. Don't you want to put on some frosting and eat it all up? I do.



Inside is mostly shops and restaurants, and people's houses. Ever since the Lonely Planet gave guest houses in the fort the thumbs down, by not listing them, rates have dropped on rooms, since business is down. Above, a shop lined street. Next to it -- Alex and I chill out in a quiet temple's courtyard, and he demonstrates that he still likes to draw, 1.5 months into the trip.



And a courtyard inside the fort.



A fifteen minute walk from the fort is this lovely lake. It's quite natural, actually, to have a large, elegantly decorated lake, in the middle of the desert. Jaisalmer was once a very important trading city, so I imagine that all the wealth and interest in beautiful things motivated people to beautify their city with a lake. Like a big garden. Why not?



No lake is complete without hippo themed paddle boats, which I think are a more modern addition. We go for a short cruise, and terrorize some Japanese girls in a swan boat. Why not?



On our way back from the lake, we run into a 6 year old girl, no more than two feet tall, who uses the blocking maneuvers of a an eight foot tall basketball player to obstruct our passage. Alex and I are terrified by her determined face, disarmed by her cuteness, and find it utterly impossible to move past her. Realizing that our trip could very well end here, in the streets of Jaisalmer, I think fast. Children all over India are always asking for school pens, chocolate, and money. It's a good idea to fabricate some pens made of chocolate before you leave home, to hand out, precisely for situations such as this. You can put 1 Rupee coins inside as prizes. Realizing that we have no chocolate school pens, I break into a cold sweat. I remember that I have a pen in my pocket that I've been carrying around, meaning to give away, since it's starting to run low on ink. I look into her determined eyes, and ask her, in a kind of pleading, offering, voice: "School pen?". She cocks her head. I think she's interested. There's an understanding that we're bargaining for nothing less than our safe passage home. The question mark in my voice asks: Is this enough? She thinks for a moment, interested, but not satisfied. I hold out the pen, and ask again: "School pen?" She starts nodding, reaching for the pen, giving a nonverbal gesture that the battle is over, and grabs it in her small hands, looking totally satisfied. Success and escape.



Here is the cutest deaf & mute child shoe repairman in all of India, maybe the world, working on my sandals. For one dollar, he sewed the small remaining scrap of my Choco soles back on. All over India, street shoe repairmen have tirelessly hounded me about this, and I refused -- since the sandals were clearly ready to go on the cart. But this boy's silent pitch was irresistible. At the original rate asked (skin tax already included), the number of foreign tourists in this city, and his expertise in up selling, he might also be the wealthiest deaf & mute child shoe repairman in India, and possibly the whole world. Child labor isn't a simple thing. I had a delicious breakfast prepared by a 14 year old Nepalese boy in Varanasi. As long as kids have a chance to go to school and play, I see nothing wrong with it, and some positive value, as well, and not just to our cheap consumer goods.



Jaisalmer has some lovely, exceptionally well preserved, old buildings and housings made of delicately decorated and carved sandstone. This place is so pretty, we don't go inside, since our whole world might reveal itself to us in only black and white from here on out. It's a fate we don't want to tempt.



We find this treasure in the city outside of the fort. If you, or anyone you know, can translate and explain this poster, don't delay -- write in now! Our curiosity hangs in the balance.



We go for dinner one night inside the fort. Where to eat? We ask some shopkeepers their expert opinion. What kind of food do we want? Indian, of course. Italian food abounds here, for some reason. Maybe tomatoes grow really well in the desert. Our shopkeeper friends suggest we walk a bit, turn the corner, walk some more, and look for a place called "Meals Service." Five minutes later we are standing, blinking, in front of a staircase that seems to go up into a residential building, with a hand written sign on the outside proclaiming "Meals Service." Before we can follow our second thoughts to their logical conclusion, some children come bouncing down the stairs, and happily greet us.

I venture in, to check the place out. It's the inside of an Indian family's apartment. Where will we sit, I ask? The kids excitedly point to a seat built into a window nook. Nice. I ask the kids -- do you have a rooftop we can eat on? Yes -- with a lovely view of the entire fort from above! My skepticism is leaving me now, but I have to see the menu. What are we in for? Some really nice sounding and nicely priced Thalis. I've heard of restaurants run by blind people where all eating is done in the dark, but eating at a place run by children? And who will cook the food, I ask the kids? "Grandma!" I report back to Alex that we have to eat here -- someone's grandma will make us dinner, and we can sit on the roof of the fortress, look out, and eat our Thalis. It's a done deal. The food takes a while, which we're used to by now, but it's awesome possum. And it's veg! Above is the cook in her kitchen.

The time has come for us to undergo the trial by sand and mammal. It had to come to this. Stay tuned, same web site, future time, for the further adventures of Chaim & Alex. Find out what really happens in Thar, and where Spice really comes from. All this and more in our next issue.