We left the Hyatt Jaipur very reluctantly. We had to say goodbye to the strangely reassuring feeling of being temporarily suspended in our old life – the one where we worked and the kids went to school. During school holidays and long breaks, we flew to cool places and stayed at Hyatts around the world. When the holiday was over, we went back to the predictability of school and work on the weekdays and family and friends on the weekends.
That bubble burst with our departure from the Hyatt and poof, we were back to our nomadic life – everyday, every moment, exposed to the uncertainties and unpredictability of the environment that we were in. Each time we moved to a new Airbnb, we had to reacquaint ourselves with a new home, a new neighborhood, new people and new rules. Does the Airbnb have reliable hot water? Is the house equipped with a water filter or do we need to stock up on bottled water? Can we get stuff delivered or do we have to go somewhere to buy it? Where is the nearest food market? Is it within walking distance or do we need to find transport Should we call an Uber, find a taxi or hop on a tuk tuk? Do we need to get two vehicles or will the driver let us squeeze into one. Does the market sell everything we need or do we have to go to different shops? What kind of meat is that? How should we cook this? Are there suitable pots and pans in the house? The questions that require attention and a decision, just to prepare food, go on ad infinitum.
When you are at “home”, you can take most of these questions for granted because you already have reliable answers, thus you can apply your brain energy to thinking about other things. But in our kind of lifestyle, each of these questions requires constant attention because the answers are always changing. Particularly in India, we have found there is a wide range of possible answers. It was the guesswork required to arrive at an answer or the likelihood of having no answer at all that made India an exhausting place to travel.
We had already been in India for three weeks and we were suffering from what I now recognize as travel fatigue. We hadn’t felt this kind of fatigue in other countries before, maybe a little in Egypt. The constant chaos, crowds and demands for our attention not to mention the dust and litter everywhere, made me feel exhausted. Our instinct told us to retreat to somewhere familiar, clean, comfortable and predictable. We wouldn’t know if our Airbnb in Udaipur fit the bill until we arrived and saw it with our own eyes.
Together with Lynn and Dana, we traveled by minibus to Udaipur, famous for its beautiful lakes and nicknamed the “City of Lakes” or the “Venice of the East”. Udaipur has a lot of nicknames because in keeping with the tradition of naming famous cities in Rajasthan after colors, Udaipur is called the “White City”. As Rajasthan is truly a kaleidoscope of colors, Jaipur is known as the “Pink City” while Jaisalmer is referred to as the “Yellow or Golden City”.
Located in a dusty residential road, we arrived at our Airbnb. I guessed it was an upscale neighborhood by the appearance of the homes, all multi-story and many secured with front gates. But the street itself was unpaved, with piles of dirt or cow dung deposited here and there. In some areas, there were open gutters with planks of wood providing convenient crossings. We have learned that the appearance of the neighborhood streets can have little correlation with the inside of the homes.
We went into the house and our fears were put to rest. The two-story house was perfectly modern and clean. It had high ceilings and appeared comfortable. There was a western kitchen equipped with western-style pots and pans. The living room was spacious with several different seating areas. There was even a small garden and a swing right in the living room.
Each of the bedrooms had an ensuite bathroom and the only thing that looked out of place were the large buckets in the showers. We came to know that these buckets are placed there for several purposes, reserving water during water shutdowns and for those who prefer (not us) old-fashioned bucket showers.
This looked to be the perfect house for us to escape the chaos outside and find a way to recenter ourselves. We had seven full nights in Udaipur to find out. First, we would need to find food that we could cook ourselves. Although Leo and I love Indian food, I stopped enjoying it by about the second week. It is incredibly rich and filled with spices (masala) that are delicious once in a while, but since we don’t use it in our cooking, we aren’t accustomed to having it every day let alone at every meal. The kids, especially, suffered (their word). They struggled to find something that they could eat because in addition to the richness and flavors, so much of the food is spicy. Even when we explicitly requested non-spicy food, more often than not, the food was served spicy. It’s a keen disappointment for the kids to wait for the special non-spicy food to arrive at a restaurant, only to find when it is finally served, that it is still spicy. RY and AY can tolerate a little spice. DY does his best but needs to be equipped with an endless supply of water to wash down the spice. Poor EY often ended up eating the bread (naan) and rice accompanied by a few slices of cucumbers and tomatoes.
Finding fresh vegetables has been the easiest ingredients to source. On many streets, there is often a vegetable stall or a mobile vegetable cart with a good variety of produce. The most challenging ingredient to find was meat. Many Indians are strict vegetarians and anything to do with meat is traditionally a job reserved for “untouchables”. We didn’t know where to begin looking for meat and dinnertime was drawing near. So on the first night, we opted for a pure vegan meal whipped up by Dana, who happens to be a classically trained chef with a restaurant in Taipei. It was a wonderful experience for RY to experience working in the kitchen with a professional chef. He worked as Dana’s sous chef and according to Dana’s specifications and standards, completed all of the prep work for the meal. With humble ingredients, Dana and RY produced a heavenly 2-course meal of vegetable soup and tomato pasta. After three weeks of heavy meals laden with masala and ghee, this vegan meal was indeed light and divine.
The next day, I spent some time scouring through the internet for a meat shop or butcher in our neighborhood. To my surprise, I actually located one and was able to contact the owner over Whatsapp. Since the shop was only open during certain hours of the day, we agreed that I would show up to buy meat the following day between 5-6 pm. At the appointed time, we showed up at the shop that was a few streets from our Airbnb. There was a sign on the window that indicated we were at the right place but unfortunately, the shop was closed. I peered into the shop through the tinted window and inside, I could only see a counter and two standing refrigerators. We walked around the area waiting for the shop to open. Nearby, there was a liquor shop, a few convenience item shops, a shop that sold toilets and faucets and further down the street, there was a grocery store. After about half an hour, we returned to the shop and found the door was now unlocked and an old man with a white beard was inside. We went inside and told the man we wanted chicken. He opened one of the refrigerators and took a pre-packaged sealed bag of chicken breast out. He poured the contents into a metal bowl on the counter. It looked ok so we said we would take 4 pieces. None of us said anything about the bowl looking dirty and we all noticed that he didn’t wear gloves or wash his hands before or after he touched the meat. Well, those are just minor details when you are buying meat in India.
He picked out 4 large chicken breasts and put them in another plastic bag, tied it and handed it to us. We paid for the meat and were on our way. Everybody was in high spirits at the anticipation of having meat for dinner. That night, Dana and RY cooked chicken stew with tomatoes and fresh peas served with a side of buttered corn on the cob. Later that evening while I was getting ready for bed, I received a Whatsapp message from the owner of the meat shop asking me if I got what I needed. He apologized for not being there in person because he had to take care of some other business. It was his dad looking after the shop.
The third night, we didn’t have to worry about the dinner issue because we had pre-ordered a vegetarian dinner from a lady in the neighborhood, to be delivered to our home at 6 pm. After several nights of home-cooked food, we were ready to get back out there. The home-cooked meal included tomato and pepper soup, one dish made of potato, peas and tomato, another dish of cabbage and peas, rice and chapati. The lady was kind enough to make two separate portions of each dish, one original taste for the adults and one zero-spice for the kids. We had high hopes and I wish I could say the food tasted delicious, but it was very oily and didn’t suit our tastes.
On the fourth day, I woke up with the pressures of dinner on my mind. By now, we had found a very good fruit and vegetable market not far from our Airbnb. It was a relatively big open-air produce shop with a good selection of fruit and vegetables piled neatly. It was all fresh and of good quality. After sightseeing, we had been stopping by this produce market to purchase ingredients for dinner and fruit for breakfast the following morning.
For lunch, Lynn and AY prepared a spread of our favorite homestyle Chinese dishes including tomato and egg, string beans and matchstick potatoes. All of the dishes had the taste of home. The only part of the meal that didn’t taste right was the basmati rice which has a totally different flavor and texture compared to Chinese rice. But it would have to do.
As has become almost routine, we hopped into a tuktuk and went to buy produce at the produce market. The tuktuk driver waited patiently for us to finish our shopping. After we hopped back into the tuktuk, I was planning to ask the driver to go back to the meat shop where we bought the chicken the previous day. Leo was keen to explore and with the help of google translate, asked the driver if he knew of a meat shop nearby. Sure! He knew of one. And we sped off in the direction of a different meat shop.
From the Butcher of Udaipur (see blog post), we bought an unappetizing bag of chicken parts. Dana took special care to wash and trim the meat because of its questionable appearance and transformed it into a pot of chicken soup with corn and carrots. With the soup, we had vegetarian fried rice.
Inspired by the sights, sounds and encounters so far in India, EY started working on a “show”. She repurposed a packaging for bindhi dot stickers into a little screen frame and drew about 10 scenes of her impressions and experiences in India. During her performance, she paired the scenes with sound effects or snippets of dialogue. One of her scenes was of the chaotic street paired with non-stop honking sounds of car horns. Another scene was a repairman going up the stairs to fix something on the roof accompanied by the flat thud of the footsteps. Our favorite scene and the one that she took the most delight in performing was about an incident that happened with Leo’s sister, Lynn. When she was going into the bathroom, an Indian lady warned her that she was walking into an “Indian toilet,” (presumably a squat toilet) to which she replied, “I like the Indian toilet.”
EY performed her show several times and all of us, adults and children, watched with great interest and amusement at EY’s interpretation of events and sense of humor. It goes without saying that the way each of us remembers and internalizes our experiences on this trip will be different. Even though EY is only 5 years old, she is trying to make sense of the world through her lens and in her own way. Being an observer of how each of the children are trying to do that is as fascinating and significant to me as being on the trip itself.
We said goodbye to Lynn and Dana who returned to Taiwan. We were grateful for the time they spent with us and the skills, interests and perspectives that they brought to our classroom without walls. In between sightseeing, journalling, learning time and play time, getting and preparing food was always in the back of every adult’s mind. With our collective efforts, each meal that we created with humble ingredients was an achievement to be celebrated. We braced ourselves for the upcoming days of finding something to eat, absent the capabilities and contributions of Lynn and Dana. We still had a couple more nights left in Udaipur and we were on our own again.
