• I hate having to think of titles to posts!!!

    I hate having to think of titles to posts!!!

    Another post so soon? Well it's a bit of a slow day. I'm still in Jaipur, off to Pushkar tomorrow I hope. I haven't done everything I wanted to from Jaipur. I didn't make it to Balaji. I did see Amber fort (today), the museum, the city palace and the observatory. All these things are royal attractions. To be honest, I'm finding that I'm not at all interested in royal things, they bore me, they always have. This is helpful as it means that I can pretty much exclude these types of things from the rest of my trip. I haven't enjoyed Jaipur that much, it's ok. The food here hasn't been great (I'm sure there's great food if you know where to look), Jaipur a very busy place with lots of traffic and the usual array of beggars, rickshaw drivers and general hawkers constantly hassling. here is probably not the best of places to have made my first destination after the preceding few weeks. After 5 days here and before that 8 days in Delhi, I have high hopes for Pushkar's calming tranquility.

    I have been reading a book of abridged and translated versions of some of the legends told in some of the holy books of Hinduism. I have to say that this line of enquiry into the religion has led me to like the religion less and less. It is sooooo sexist. It is not at all surprising that with Hinduism as one the building blocks of Indian society, India suffers from a deeply ground in backwards attitude towards the sexes and what roles in the family and in society people are allowed to fulfill. In addition to this, in tales of great devotion, the devotee (usually a man) will carry out a great deed in honour of a god. He might stand on one leg for a thousand years whilst reciting devotional mantras or sacred texts. I think in all the cases that I have read the man (usually, probably always actually, his wife is probably along for the ride so he has someone to massage his feet and wipe his brow as he toils) does this to bring to himself great power. In many cases this power is unleashed in some horrible act of revenge against man, beast or god. This does not fit in well with my conditioned idea of what kinds of ideals a religion ought to promote, not a religion as such but give me Buddhism any day of the week. My last point about Hinduism is that so many of the tales seem to have the moral that:

    a) You should never kill a brahmin.
    b) You should never argue with a brahmin.
    c) YOu should give cows to brahmins.
    d) Brahmins are absolutely top and know everything and are as gods

    Hmmmmm. I wonder, did brahmins write these texts?? Well, yes, it seems they did. So, as it stands, I'm not about to become a massive Hindu zealot. What am I to do with my Om and Ganesh t-shirts???? (Actually, none of the stories I've read so far have said anything about Ganesh.) If I were to erect a shrine for me to focus such things as prayers on, it would probably comprise of statues of Buddha and Gandhi and maybe an ash tray full of Bob Marley's old spliff ends.

    I am starting to formulate a plan of what to do next, see list below:

    Pushkar
    Jodhpur
    Jaisalmer
    Udaipur
    Ahmedabad (Gandhi's ashram where he was resident)
    Nagpur (Not far from here, Gandhi's other ashram, can stay at this one)
    Khajuraho
    Varanasi (Oooooo, bombs at the station here recently apparantly)
    Bodhgaya
    Kathmandu
    Pokhara
    Amritsar
    ..... some places in the mountains .....
    Rishikesh
    Delhi
    Home

    I have less than 2 months to do the above so it's probably not all gonna happen. Anyway, prolly post again in Pushkar or summink ;~).