Photo: Child Bathing, Jaipur, Rajasthan

Child bathing. Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.

Painted Elephants on Parade: Rajasthan Overview, Part I

Note: This is a 2 part post. The 2nd installment will be coming next week.


Rajasthan is a land of desert visions and city dreams. There is a touch of something mystical here, a sense of great power and age. In many ways, exploring this part of India is like being dropped into the midst of a twisted modern fairytale, one in which the kings have been replaced by turban clad peasants and the paupers by shadowy slum dwellers. Everything is entirely unexpected and yet utterly natural; cluttered highways make perfect sense next to ancient temples, and centers of busy towns seem perfectly logical places to park elephants.

'Everything, ' I wrote in my journal during my trip through Rajasthan, 'is a visual jolt, a snare that grabs your attention. The beeping colorful buses, the sadhu with his topknot, a group of girls in public school uniforms -- nothing is too minor to be boring.' This was in the same entry that I marveled at the discovery of Masala flavored potato chips and the painted elephants that dot the streets like feverish hallucinations.

Rajasthan's landscape is a lesson in brutality, a skeletal moonscape of rocks and tired, dusty fields. For miles and miles the ground is flat, broken up by ragged farms and meandering villages. Unexpectedly the topography might change, rising up into sudden hills. The sides of these slumbering beasts are dauntingly sheer and clad in a thin covering of brown undergrowth, a prickly fur of shrubbery. In the distance low mountains crouch, imposing and impossibly far away.

It is not only the land that is merciless. At the height of the summer season the temperature is, at times, unbearably hot. Even the locals will note, with some pride, that the sun here can be intolerable. It beats down on you, a furnace of light and heat, punishing and powerful. Tar on the road melts and the paint peels off of buildings in this weather. Every guide book in the world will advise tourists not to travel during this time of year, and with good reason. It's a time when even dogs try to stick to the shade.

Yet, there is no denying the stark beauty of this place. There is something attractive about a landscape laid bare, a place that isn't afraid to expose itself to the elements. Something primal still exists here, something untamed and unfiltered. The closest I can come to describing Rajasthan is to compare it to minamalist music, all simple frameworks and complex subtleties.

Continued in the next entry.