We'll Be Just Fine If We Never See Another Cow's Reproductive Anatomy Again
jaipur was really nice. we had a nice, comfortable room and friendly, helpful hosts (even if they were a bit slow with service). we arrived into jaipur in the late morning, and were immediately assaulted by several autorickshaw drivers who wanted to give us tourist information and take us to a hotel, anywhere in jaipur 10Rs my rickshaw madame. we made arrangements at the place i mentioned and were grateful that they came to pick us up. fixing our jaws and walking with determination, we rebuffed the persistant offers for help and were told to "be good tourists" -- to which stephanie replied with enthusiasm and a note of exasperation, "be a good autorickshaw driver!" we got into the hotel jeep and were whisked away from the swarm to our comfy hotel.by the time we were settled in, in was late in the afternoon and we were ready for a massage. we went to one place that had only one man who knew ayurverdic massage, and was charging 900Rs for one hour. we thanked them and left, deciding to have a slow evening walking the street and window shopping from a safe distance so as not to be aggressively invited in for just looking, madame, looking free. we rounded a corner and happened upon another beauty shop, that did not do threading or massage, but that did have some shampoo that seemed like a reasonable replacement for the empty bottle i was about to be carrying around. i bought the shampoo and stephanie bought some henna. back out onto the street to marvel at the giant hogs grunting and nosing around in the garbage in the middle of the street. jaipur has the most diverse traffic of any city we've been to -- the usual autorickshaws, cars, cows, bicycles, motorcycles, people, the occasional monkey, chicken, dog, person pulling a cart, horse pulling a cart, donkey pulling a cart, a greater number of cycle rickshaws, and the new addition of hogs and camel carts. stephanie and i agreed that we would be just fine if we never saw another cow anus or vagina (these are at eye level when you are in an autorickshaw).
we walked around a bit more, stopped into an ayuverdic beauty supply store, and headed back to our room for dinner. up the next day and meet mr. abdul, the autorickshaw wallah (driver) we hired for the day. we needed to get to the travel agency to book our onward train tickets and return to delhi, and i to book my return to the us (i think most of you will be happy to hear that i am due to arrive in dc on lufthansa from frankfurt at around 2:00pm on the 28th of this month). what a hassle and a waste of time. indian inefficiency and "10 minutes only" turned our quick stop into a two hour sit and search for stephanie's jewel. we finally said that we would go and return later in the day.
our driver took us to a place for massage, where we each had a full hour ayuverdic massage (yes, the full body kind), and 20 minutes with herbal pouches dipped in hot oil as the massage instrument. it was great. and stephanie's hair looked awesome after the scalp massage part. :)
from there we headed out for a quick bite to eat (i refuse to own where) and then to see a site where a maharaja, his wife, and 14 of his children are all buried. we wanted to see the amber fort (actually, it turns out that we wanted to see the amber palace, a semantic mistake that would frustrate and exhaust us later), so we went from there past the floating palace and out to amber. our driver instructed us how to ascend the path to the fort (the elephants that usually carry tourists up the semi-steep path were unavailable when we were there because one elephant went a bit mad and trampled and killed a couple of people). we indeed ascended the path to the fort, which was not the 10 minutes that he had said, but closer to 45 minutes, this because we failed to turn into the destination we really wanted, the palace. the fort was lame, but it did have a nice view, and we did get some exercise. stephanie was tempted to take a camel back down (you know you are in a foreign country when travel by camel is an option to consider), but we decided against it in the end and walked. we were a bit bummed to have missed the palace, which is supposed to be very pretty on the inside, but such is the way of things, and we had to get back to the travel agency before close to make sure that we would be able to depart the next morning for agra and the taj mahal.
we retrieved our tickets and headed back into the old city -- the pink city as it is known because ithe entire city was painted pink in the early 1900s as a show of welcome for the british king at the time -- for some shopping. jaipur is famous for gems and textiles, and we went to look at gems. per the stephanie and raquel standard for shopping and bargaining, we took a couple of hours to decide on a few items, and by then it was late and time for dinner and getting ready for bed. we had dinner in the room again, recieved our gem dealer at midnight (he had to make some alterations and bring the jewelry by our room), and were asleep for four hours before having to rise for our train to agra.
back to the monkey station (tens of monkeys of all ages live at the train station. they climb, play, drink from the leaks in the pipes, eat of the crumbs and passenger-discarded bits of food, and occasionally are bold enough to run up and knock fruit or bread from the hands of unalert passers by) and on the train early. on the train we discovered that the taj mahal is actually closed on fridays, which was the day we were to be in agra, and we took some time to reconsider our itinerary. leave in the evening as planned and go to varanasi? stay overnight in agra and go to varanasi for a few hours before heading back to delhi? stay overnight in agra and return to jaipur? we decided at the station to skip the inside of the taj and continue with our original itinerary. a wise decision.
posted by Dr.Quel @ 10:50 PM
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