Last week we decided to begin heading North.... we are anxious to reach the areas that were our main intentions for the trip (province of rajasthan)... our first stop over was a city called Bijapur. We headed here by bus, from Hospet.
Remember in grade school when we would race to the back of the bus, fighting over who got the primo 'get air on the bumps' seats? Yeah, well, we didn't at the time. We sat in the far back and our rear ends paid the price for it. The road (read : entire 6 hour journey) was having construction done, so it was a dirt gravel road in which we got air my snowboarding brother would be jealous of.
We arrived in Bijpaur in the dark of the night (bus was late due to construction) with no place to stay. Into a rickshaw, drinksfoodshowerbed. Wake up, go for a walk. We were stared at EVERYWHERE we went, and not in a way that made us feel comfortable. We are getting used to the idea of being foreigners, having people interested in us (for conversation or business reasons) but there was literally not a place where we could go without being watched - completely. An added measure of discomfort was the fact that there were no women in any public spaces (unless they were working) except for me.
We spent a day walking to the Gol Gumbaz, which is a beautiful, epic mausoleum that rivals the Taj. A dome (the second largest in the world) completely unsupported by pillars, this tomb has something called the whispering gallery - an area where you can speak in a soft tone and be heard across the entire structure. Our trip here was cut short, as we were inundated with people trying to take our pictures and mass groups of people following us around. It seemed that the tourists were more interested in us as an attraction than the attraction itself!
Needless to say, we had our first 'culture shock travelers breakdown" and we ended up hiding in our room for the rest of the day/evening. We realized that we truly felt a difference in the stares here, and that outside the Gol Gumbaz we felt unwelcome and misunderstood. We were ready to move on to the next place, ready for a change of pace.... and next came beautiful Pune, our vacation resort in India.
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