I have only known anything about this state from their aesthetic architectural images from twitter, princely states from history books, memes about the child marriges, and their tourism ads. In every visual I have seen prior coming here gave me an impression that this place is just desert all throught. It was a surprise when it turned out to be opposite of it for the most part execpt some places.

I live(d) in a part of the Guntur that is closer to Nalgonda than it is to rest of the Guntur. Our lands are dry; we depend on the monsoon rains and the water from canal water. While travelling through the state of Rajsthan, I realized we share more in common with them in many ways than we do, say, Kerala. The same can't be said about the coastal Andhra, though. So my summary of my reaction after the trip is this meme.

The pride

I noticed a lady in warrior attire along with their crew fimiling a video. I went near to them to see what's going on. It looked it's for some sort of reel. She appears to be from the "Rajput"s. I very well know the caste pride because the "kamma" pride is perhaps the most vulgar display of the caste in my day to day life but this was the first time my expereicne with the similar kind of the pride from the nother part of the country. While visiting the forts and kings' palaces I read much about the army and their heads. The social structures of the past continue to exist in some shape or the form. There is definitely false sense of pride in assuming that our ancestors were warrior class and feeling of superiority. It happens everywhere and no state is an exception from it.

In praise of capitalism

There was only one thought I would keep having while visiting the halls of the palaces occupied by kings' and queens of the kingdom. They had access to certain material things that were only accessible to them that regular person can't get access to. It doesn't make sense to retrospectively compare their lifestyle to current standard of living but right now I can afford to live a life that only kings could have access to. It's 70 years since independent india. On a long horizon may not be much. I am thankful to contemporary world to let me have acess to the kings life of 1950. The palaces are still occupied by their descendants, now their families got into politics but not the positions of great power. Purely from materialistic things, I can still have access to the equal as of their. It's true it will be expensive but that's not the point. The kings of the past are fundamentally same citezen of independent india as me. They inherited some wealth but when the capital is not deployed properly it doesn't take much time to evaporate it. The neoliberalist capitalism did and doesn't the best job. The knowledge economy is the great equilzer

Apathy for cleanliness

On one hand you have forts and palaces with wonderful architecture and next to it is a piles and piles of garbage. While I undestand it's a problem across the country, I would have imgined they kept the tourist places clean but no, it's just garbage and dirty everywhere. I don't understand, how can you have a garbage dump next to such beautiful and historical monumnet.

Rip off baby

Everywhere you go and everything you do, you get a sense of the person is trying to rip you off. It's just everywhere. I don't understand this as well. It's not like the your income source is ending tomorrow then why would you try to scam anybody instead of doing noble work and charge for what it is. This is the most distateful, and I even got scammed. I was made to pay 5000 rupees to visit a sunset at the Sam sand dunes just for 1 hour. It feels so stupid I fell for it. It's a lession perhpas.

Food

I ate at the nice hotels trying some local culinary and some non-local but best made culinary of other states. However, i feel guilty of not truly knowing what do people cook at home and eat on day to day basis. I say this because you can go to any restaurant but the menu are popular and you know how the food tastes but the food people make at home is just different and place to place and home to home have different way of cooking the same thing. Hopefully, someday, I can just leave everything behind and spend a month in some random place without access to modern day life

Rural

While my trip didn't involve any places with rural areas, I made drive to drive me through the rural roads several times. It's just all the same as home. I saw the crops the we grow at home. I saw buffalos/cows and sheep/goat as the main cattle which is what we have at home. The handpumps, overhead water tanks. The major difference was there are some streches of barren lands that are probably not cultivatable. It was like visiting home but they are little extreme in some regards but it's not some desert life like middle east.

Temples

I only visited two temples overall and didn't have pleasant experience at either of the place. Went to karni mata temple Deshnok. God damn, that's a nasty place and extremely unhygenic place. You should leave your footwear and w and walk among the rats, and rats poop, and larave from rats. I understand rats might be there for a reason but you can take care of them separately instead of infesting the place with rats and their piss poop making it extremely uncomforable for visitos.

Next, I visited Brhma temple. It's sad how the temple is not the place for serenity. It's a machiney for ripping you off again. At the entrace you have vendors chasing you and trying to sell you stuff. It seems to me that the poojari and these vendors. You can't stand there and pay your offerings to god. If you leave the place without giving the Dakshina, the poojari looks at you like a subhuman worthless of the gods blessing or grace. Again, I kind knew this already from visiting