Phalodi/Khichan: "No birds, no camel rides, no sand dunes!"
March 17, 2006
Amazing sights may inspire your travels, but it’s the experiences you have, and the people you see and meet, that make a trip memorable. This would certainly be the case in India, and particularly in Phalodi.
Though neither of us consider ourselves to be bird aficionados, we decided to go out to Phalodi for a couple days, specifically to see the spectacle of migratory demoiselle cranes in Khichan.
We are using Lonely Planet as our India guide book, and it’s generally served us well. However, for this leg of the trip it would lead us astray…and our stories are the richer for it! Specifically, Lonely Planet highlighted what sounded like a wonderful place to stay (a "splendid carved deep terra cotta haveli in the old part of town"); an interesting place on the way at Osiyan (a "magnificent temple with beautiful carvings,”) and "spectacular sand dunes" at Khichan.
First up was a stop at the temple at Osiyan, which I had heard about before and was anxious to see. Perhaps I’m getting a little jaded. It was about 1000 years old with many excellent carvings, but overall the experience is not up to snuff with the other temples and monuments that are considered to be India’s highlights.
So we traveled on to Phalodi, and we entered the town via the market, which should be placed on the map as “the barber center of India.” There must have been 30 stalls set up alongside the road, each with one or two barber chairs and a mirror. Most had clients in the chair, and we caused quite a few stares as our car made it's way through the streets. The market/barber street was the only real sign of life in the town, as the rest of the town was just about deserted.
Our driver had to keep stopping to ask for directions to our hotel, the Lal Niwas Haveli, and we found ourselves in a deserted street that seemed to be lined with abandoned and run down haveli townhouses. Then our driver stopped in the middle of the deserted area, and a man appeared and said "Welcome to Lal Niwas!" Here’s where the trepidation set in….
The reception area of the hotel was very dark, and as I checked-in it seemed like the clerk was standing in a tunnel. I think there was probably a wall or something behind him, but all I could see was his face framed by blackness. He then took us through a courtyard, through a couple of low archways (all the doorways were made for people 4'8" or shorter) and up a few randomly placed staircases to our room. We appeared to be the only guests here, so we were given the Family Suite, which Lonely Planet billed as a "fantastic suite with a number of rooms separated by curved arches").
Technically, it was a suite, technically, it had a number of rooms, and technically, they were separated by curved arches. However, it most certainly was not fantastic. Michelle, with an innate ability to smell trouble, immediately did a check to see if our driver was still downstairs so that we could perhaps turn around and leave, but he had already fled, so we settled in.
I seem to recall learning in school that diamond is the hardest substance known to man. Well, whoever said that had apparently not tried out the bed in the Family Suite at the Lal Niwas, which was remarkably hard. The dark room also featured a low ceiling fan which I constantly worried about walking into; beautifully carved windows which had bare panes of glass crudely nailed in by wooden borders; tacky furniture; and a shower that didn’t drain.
Ordinarily, none of the above would be a big deal, but (a) our trusty guidebook had set our expectations considerably higher, and (b) we were paying something like $60 for the room, which should get you a fairly nice place in rural India.
No matter: We decided to go to lunch to boost our spirits. Our waiter was more like our prison guard, speaking to us with a tone of authority and suspicion, and unwilling to let us out of his sight. I peeked out the window, and outside saw a cow eating out of a pile of trash by the road. I closed the curtains. Meanwhile, Hernandez perked up when she saw bhindi (asparagus) on the menu, and ordered it from our guard:
Guard: “There is no bhindi.”
Hernandez: “Really? I just saw some in the market when we drove in.”
Guard: "Bhindi no good, I do not like. No Bhindi.”
Me: “Oh, well. How about a Cobra beer?”
Guard: “No Cobra. Cobra no good, I do not like.”
So the hotel roundly sucked, but I saw no reason for this to deter us from enjoying our visit. I went down to the dungeon-like reception area:
“I would like to arrange to go see the birds this afternoon.”
“No birds today. Tomorrow morning.”
“OK. Then could I arrange to take a camel out to the sand dunes?”
“No camel available. No sand dunes.”
When I reported back to Hernandez, she was now able to appreciate that it all looked so bad that it was hilarious. As she sat in the darkness of our bleak room, she cackled “Perfect! No birds, no camel rides, and no sand dunes!”
Determined to get out of the hotel, I asked the dungeon-master at the front desk if he could arrange for an auto-rickshaw to pick us up, and take us to a lake where the birds supposedly hung-out in the afternoon. At this time I also informed him that our plans had changed and we would be staying only one night.
Manager: "Oh! Well, um….if you stay, I can give you camel safari tomorrow. Tomorrow four-thirty, we go out, we see sand dunes, we see sunset, very good."
Turns out that the hotel had a couple camels that were used for labor, and our guy was apparently thinking he’d scrounge-up a saddle, and put the camels to work hauling us around. One minor problem with this strategy was that it would have been a fair ways to get to anything resembling a sand dune.
Me: "Well, we'll see, but for now, we just want a trishaw to go to see the lake, the sand dunes, and the bird feeding area."
So the manager got a driver for us, and the manager and driver spoke to each other in Hindi for a while. Here's Michelle’s guess at the translation:
Manager: "OK, we have two crazy tourists here. They want to see sand dunes, the lake and the birds."
Driver: "Did you tell them there are no sand dunes, the lake is dry, and there are no birds tonight?"
Manager: "Of course I did, do you take me for a fool? But still they do not listen to me. At least you will make 70 rupees to drive them out to the desert to see nothing. Me? I have lost a customer for tomorrow night."
Driver: "OK, let's go!"
So, we got in our auto-rickshaw and had a look around in the afternoon, confirmed there wasn’t much to see, and then arose early the next day to see the birds. I don’t tend to do much whining while on the road, but in this case I moaned about sleeping poorly on the impressively hard bed. However, as soon as we stepped outside the door of the hotel, we saw that the doorman and other staff were just waking up, after sleeping the night on blankets rolled-out on the marble patio. This led me to cease my moaning. As Hernandez said, “at least our marble slab was behind a locked door.”
The demoiselle cranes come here each winter from Central Asia. The locals consider the birds to be special, and apparently have been feeding them for over a hundred years to encourage them to stick around. It seems to be working; the number of cranes apparently grows each year.
Anyway, a little after 7AM a guy starts emptying out sacks of bird feed in a large feeding area. Cranes start assembling on a sand dune a couple hundred yards away (yes, there was indeed a sand dune here!), and gradually start creeping in towards the feeding area. The feeding guy empties out sack after sack of bird feed, and though a few pigeons came in to have a bite, the cranes kept their distance, with the occasional crane circling overhead to check status.
After emptying out A LOT of bird seed, the feeding guy closes the door where the feed is kept, and that seemed to be the “go for it!” signal to the cranes. A few cranes land, then a few more, and in a few minutes there were thousands of cranes! The sky was dark with birds and it was hard to hear ourselves over the din. A great show! Check-out the video on YouTube (sorry for the poor quality!).
As if that wasn’t enough to make any birder jump for joy, we looked around and saw about ten peacocks positioned around us on various buildings, and every once in awhile, they'd scream at each other. So between the cranes and the peacocks, we had quite a show, and we were the only two people in the audience!
Michelle is fascinated with peacocks, so we wandered around the deserted town on something of a peacock-safari. I, on the other hand, am fascinated with camels, so each time a camel cart came by I got all excited. Our driver, we assumed, would explain to other passerby in Hindi: “These are tourists, they have no peacocks at home! They have no camels at home! They come from America – what then is so great about America?”
Phalodi and Khichan certainly didn’t go according to plan, but seeing the birds was fabulous, the hotel was so horrible that it was funny, and the rest of the stay was entertaining. All in all, we expect that we’ll fondly look back at a very memorable 24 hours in Phalodi!
[A note for other travelers: We hired a car and driver to take us from Jodhpur for the 3-hour drive to Phalodi. In hindsight, taking the train and making this a stopover on the way to/from Jaiselmir would be a better way to go.]
Bob’s ratings (1=terrible, 5=ok, 10=fantastic):
- Feeding of the cranes: 8
- Lal Niwas hotel: 1
- Town of Phalodi: 2
- Temple at Osiyan: 5