A Bombay Photo Essay during Holi (previously on Facebook)

Goa in March: Tourist Cutlets and Margao's Nobler Offerings

March is the shoulder season in Goa: the charter plane crowd has thinned and the number of tourists has dwindled a bit since the air has gotten hotter. Yet, it is still lovely in the shade and the sea is calm, unlike in the next few months, when the monsoon will bring rough waves and a dangerous undertow.

While it was probably too hot to be doing anything other than swinging in a hammock on the beach, Misha and I were seized with a desire to do something active. With the help of our fisherman friend, we rented a scooter and rode off to some of the nearby beaches. Palolem, which Misha had remembered as an idyllic strip of sea and sand, where he spent hours reading in his beach hut was now an overdeveloped, overtouristed strip of beach and sand. Despite the said shoulder season, it was filled with white visitors, one gently swaying to the music inside his drug-addled head, another topless (this is not India anymore, Dorothy!), her pink breasts frying in the sun like unbreaded cutlets.

From this cauldron of inauthenticity, we fled to the capital of South Goa, Margao, In this busy provincial town, there were few visitors and many signs of former Portuguese glory and cruelty (upon the Portuguese invasion in the late 15th century, all the Hindu temples were destroyed and Catholic churches built in their place). Transported to some overheated corner of Europe, we took in the blue-painted tiles, glamorous, pastel-colored villas, goggle-eyed idols and imposing, late-Baroque churches. It felt like the last gasp of the once-glorious maritime power, now forced out by the almost uniformly Indian (and increasingly Hindu) presence on the streets.

My India Trip with Masha: Lucknow, Nawabs and Mayawati

Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, is virtually unknown in the West. Yet it is a city of remarkable 18th- and 19th-century architectural monuments the likes of which are rarely seen in this country--the Shia Islam-practicing nawabs of the city have left a legacy of dramatic mosques, a palace holding a maze of arches and passageways to waylay the enemy, sweeping entrance arches, and succulent kebabs.

It is also the headquarters of the ambitious and thoroughly corrupt state chief minister, Mayawati, who has poured millions into a park honoring her Dalit (untouchable)-based party, whose symbol is the elephant, and herself--her sculpture portrays a stocky, dowdy figure clutching a handbag.

And Lucknow is likewise the site of many a moss-grown English church and, more eerily, half-destroyed and bullet-stricken British Residency, which underwent the Siege of Lucknow during the Sepoy Mutiny (known here as the First War of Independence) in 1857.

This conflicting, multi-sided heritage is embodied in the whimsical structure that is Lucknow's 19th-century, noble-lineaged boys' school, La Martinique, built by the amateur French architect Claude Martin to combine any and all artistic influence in a glorious mishmash of flying buttresses, cupolas, and gargoyles (second photo from the bottom) and some pseudo-Indian, mosque dome-like elements.

And there, finally were we, Masha and us two, also Westerners donning an Indian guise at a wedding of Masha's friend--or rather, her friend's brother whom she herself had never met before. Having virtually crashed a wedding of a stranger twice removed (a la Obama's sari-clad party crashers), Misha and I were warmly welcomed, fed, and seen off with a gift of the city's trademark chikan (embroidered gauzy pastel-colored cloth). That too, is India.

My India Trip with Masha: Jaisalmer, the Desert City

An unfortunate disappearance act of most of my photographs, and a new job--thinking about Indo-Russian relations for a new think tank--has kept me away from my blog for a while. But now I'm back and continuing to report on adventures in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan...

Jaisalmer is perhaps the most beautiful town I've seen in all of India, a maze of honeycomb-golden buildings, carved in the most intricate geometric patterns, somewhere in the Thar desert in Rajasthan. At night, the royal palace is lit up, standing out like a golden crenellated cake structure against the dark sky. And, if the myriads of stone designs were not enough, the walls of most houses are covered with colorful paintings done on the occasion of a recent wedding--a Ganesha, a lotus flower, women carrying matkas on top of their heads.

The people are also the wildest-looking creatures I've seen in the already backward Rajasthan, perhaps because Jaisalmer is far from the other towns on the tourist circuit (and only the most hard-core, dirt-encrusted and India-savvy Europeans seem to get here). The local men are moustachioed, with fierce eyes staring out, and the women are veiled from head to toe (not the short cover-up of traditional India). We were in time for the traditional "Mr. Moustache" contest, filled with men who preened and coyly groomed their upturned treasures which gleamed under the bright desert sun.

The majority of the people here are employed in the tourist industry, selling various objects that derive from camels (smelly camelskin belts and wallets, crude sand-colored slippers), or leading those same camels on safari, which I covered in my previous post. While inevitably a bit touristy, it's also a sand-encrusted, sun-burnt golden place out of time.

My India Trip with Masha: Camel Safari in Jaisalmer

Masha, my friend and erstwhile Moscow classmate, and myself embarked on our camel safari one late February morning. The thing to do in the fabled city of Jaisalmer which lies in the middle of the Thar desert, the safari (or rather, a calm walk with a guide) is a transcendent experience that forms a contrast with the typical urban and harried Rajasthan visit.

It is not a desert in the common understanding of the word, more like a steppe with shrubbery, such as blooming cacti, euphorbia and acacia, the favored food of camels. The exception was a small patch of sand dune where we stationed our camels for the night and camped under the stars, sleeping right on the sand, after a dinner of "mixed-veg" curry and chapattis cooked right over the fire.

The camels turned out to be a mixed bag indeed. Mine, Jokhar, was a sturdy, solid mature male who responded to being mounted and led with resigned obedience (though little joy--camels in general are not the friendliest bunch). However, Masha's camel, Dabu, was an unruly, sulky and, as we later found out, undertrained teenage girl who roared in such a vulgar voice at any attempt to approach her that she had to be muzzled with a rag. Jokhar had issues of his own: January and February are the mating season for camels and he was raring to go at any opportunity. While walking or resting, Jokhar's eyes would constantly mist over and he would wistfully scan the horizon. Periodically, a large purple bubble would emerge from his mouth and make a loud gargling sound, his mating call. Only the spores in his nostrils restrained him from charging at the ethereal, lovely female camel we saw peacefully standing next to her two day-old baby.

The villages we passed through on our camel trip were some of the most godforsaken and destitute I had ever seen in India. A typical settlement is a dusty street and a few low mud-and-dung constructions around which women in purdah scrub dishes with sand and dirty-faced little kids run around, hopefully eyeing the tourists. A water well stands covered and a shack conserves oats for the camels grazing nearby. Opium is a favored substance here, touted as a stimulant and a social lubricant. In the presence of drugs and in the absence of television, (which has made inroads in most other parts of India by now), the men, silent, bearded, and absent-looking, sit around in circles, as if they have been planted there for centuries. The camels trot by, listless and majestic. All is silent again.