My ability to fall in love with any town I visit seems to be conditional upon my leaving it again. The time it takes me to settle and feel comfortable in any one place is almost always exactly the amount of time I am staying in it. When travelling, this creates a strange cyclical sensation of introduction, acquaintance, acceptance and finally enjoyment. Much like meeting a person, I have to get to know a town, before I can relax in its company.
I arrive and, although I am there, I am not yet There. I am not a part of it and it is not a part of me. While a town may have much to recommend it visually at first, like the tall, dark handsome man who has nothing to say for himself, it must first speak to me before I can come to accept and like it.
A town may show me all its beautiful gems and trinkets, impress me with its fine dining and soft climate, but if the elegance of its conversation and the warmth of its personality and character cannot convince me, then we are destined to remain passing acquaintances, unlikely to meet again or retain a place in each other's heart.
And where does this elusive character reside? Where am I to search for it or have it thrust on me, unexpectedly but delightfully welcomed? In its people of course. Those towns and cities where the people have opened themselves to me and I in turn have opened myself to them, are the ones I love.
Like an ancient ruin, a town is just a collection of buildings without its people. I have always had difficulty connecting with old buildings and historical sites (and sights), simply as I cannot re-create them in my mind, peopled with the life, love, commerce and death that are the soul of any living community.
Varanasi, praised by so many as a near-embodiment of spirituality, and home to as many eccentric and colourful people as any traveller could wish for, left me unmoved. Its inhabitants were too pushy, too loud, too disrespectful of their own holy city to find a place in my heart. I found it impossible to speak to anyone without the wearying battle of potential transaction looming overhead. They challenged me in every way and I was not up to their challenge. Rickshaw drivers, priests, boatmen all ripped me off so I retreated from them and as I did the city retreated from my affections.
I had gone there to know their city through them but they only wanted to know me through my purse. Maybe I was unlucky: other travellers have different stories of Varanasi, but my experiences, not those of others, are the only way I can judge.
Conversely, Udaipur was adorable. OK, it's pretty, with glossy white palaces sitting on a serene lake and the buildings along the main banks look - if you squint a lot - quite a bit like those along the Grand Canal in Venice. But it was the people who endeared it to me. They didn't fuss around me; greetings were, in the main, just a greeting, not an exhortation to come and buy; and chats in the street were just a chat.
In Udaiour I was offered many experiences: A motorbike ride through the city (see previous post); asked to visit someone's house; invited to a wedding; stopped for a chat by an Indian guide who wanted to practice his French and get me into bed; invited out to dinner by two adorable French girls; and - most fun of all - allowed to completely re-arrange a shopkeeper's window for him (of which more in a future post). I accepted them all, except the wedding, which I had to decline due to a previous commitment and tour guide's offer which I definitely declined!
In just three days in Udaipur, I felt that I'd already made friends - real friends, not just passing-chat friends - but ones who I would remember and and who would remember me if I visited again. I could see myself spending a lot of time there. I could picture the city as part of me and me as part of it.
In short, I felt at home there, and when you are so far away from your real home and from the people you know and love, that is a feeling that stays with you and etches that place on your heart forever.
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