Liketytrip

I want you to come on a day-trip with me. It’s just one example from a country that loves to test you by throwing you as much unpredictability as it can at you. Today it got too much.

07:15 hrs: Scheduled arrival of overnight train from Udaipur to Jaipur

09:00 hrs: Actual arrival into Jaipur, nearly 2hrs late.

We’d both had a bad night’s sleep; My belly woke me up at 1am and I immediately took a powerful Cypro tablet to quell the pain. And Guy had been sleeping near the door to the whole carriage which had been banging closed every time someone went through it (being near the loos, this was a lot).

We shrugged off the keen rickshaw tout at the pre-paid booth who tried to get us to go with him. It was early, we were tired and we couldn’t be bothered to deal with his banter or behaviour when he started jumping the queue of Indians to get the westerners to the front. He soon disappeared when he realised we wouldn’t be giving him a tip or using him for sightseeing that day.

We arrived at the first of the 3 hotels that Guy had ‘reserved’, we weren’t allowed to ‘book’ but could ‘turn up’ and see if a room was free. We did. It wasn’t. So we moved on to the hotel next door which had a ground floor like a building site; dust everywhere, two enormous billiard tables covered over with a sheet. We took a look at the room; it didn’t have a window. So we moved on to hotel number 2. It was a fair walk away with our rucksacks, but we made it – and a good job we did too. For exactly the same price as the window-less dustbowl in a scummy smelly area we had comparative luxury; smiling staff who spoke perfect (American) English, a tendered garden, a clean rooftop terrace, a spacious room (with cupboards and hangers!) plus room service and a telephone! I could have stayed here all day to sleep but we had things to do:

1) Get credit on our mobile phones
2) Post our photo CDs home
3) See what’s on at the local cinema
4) Visit the Old City

Ok, so only 4 things. For a day in England this wouldn’t be too much to ask, but….

11.00 hrs: We got directions to a shopping mall where we could top up our phones. We were after the real Vodafone store as Guy’s phone had problems (we weren’t after just one of the temporary-looking outposts where you can only top up credit). We asked an Indian for the Vodafone shop; “Upstairs block 3”. It wasn’t. We asked someone else; “I don’t know”. Someone else; “Downstairs”. So we went back downstairs on this goose-chase and there wasn’t a Voda store there at all, only their competitors, Airtel. We’ve become used to Indians not listening to the question you ask, or making up directions when they don’t know; they either lie or they just gesticulate in a general direction. They seem to want to give the impression that they know.

11:45 hrs: Thanks to the Nice Man at Airtel we arrived at the Vodafone store. It had irritating looping music; each loop lasted only 90 seconds, it would stop for a couple more and then start up again. It was so irritating that Guy wrote a letter to their HQ to complain, apparently the store staff can’t tell head office stuff like that… We struggled our way through to fix our problems and left, not really knowing if our trip had been successful or not; Guy’s phone still didn’t work and my phone hadn’t been topped up. Give it an hour they said.

12:30 hrs: We took a rickshaw to the Post Office for To Do List point 2. We got stuck in some traffic close to the Post Office so paid and got out. Having spotted a car showroom we popped in to see what the deal is for an Indian. The salesman was keen to point out that the Mahindra jeep is entirely Indian made (I’m not sure that’s a selling point; we opened the door and it smelt funny). He sells 120 of these jeeps every month – that’s a scary prospect as there are already too many cars on the street jostling for position let alone these enormous jeeps. They cost 6.5 lakhs (ie 650,000 rupees, or £8,126 – metal cow bar included and 14km to the gallon). A bargain. We tried telling him 4x4s are becoming less and less popular in the UK and that they should try to hold on to their love of small cars but he didn’t seem to care.

We continued by foot to the Post Office and joined the queue; with only 5 people in front of us it was still slow, not helped by the fact that Indians don’t appreciate a good-old-British queue and quite happily barge in front. To cut a long story short we were in the wrong line and were told to go upstairs to the Foreign Post Office (why didn’t she figure that out twenty minutes ago and tell us?). Upstairs we found a set of rooms, no counter and all the people we saw shirked responsibility doing their usual gesticulating. Eventually one waved us to a chair. It turns out we were waiting for a particular man who would help us, but when he turned up even he was a shirker. He was also the most gormless-looking man we’ve seen so far and he didn’t speak a word of English (surely that would be a pre-requisite for a ‘Foreign Post Office’?). There was lots of talking and shaking of heads until one man seemed to hint he could help but even he looked at a loss as to what to do with us. Despite all the parcels lying on the floor, no-one gave us any confidence that they’d done this before or that our own parcels would make it out the building. So we gave up and left to see the lady again downstairs to persuade her to help us. But she’d gone for lunch.

13:30 hrs: At this stage on the To Do List we were losing 2-0. No credit on phone. No success at the Post Office. On to number 3 – the cinema. Jaipur is home to one of India’s best cinemas but it didn’t really live up to expectations set in our Good Book, ‘The number one Hindu cinema in India, world famous Raj Mandir is an icon of Jaipur. The meringue-shaped auditorium is so ugly it’s beautiful while the cream puff exterior looks ready to orbit outer space or get gobbled up by a sweet-toothed ogre’. Nothing like it. Unfortunately the cinema was only showing one film repeatedly and it was one we weren’t keen on seeing. Score 3-0. By this time we were hungry, it was 2pm and the Golden Arches appeared just round the corner. We succommed (rather too easily).

14:00 hrs: MacDonalds, Mmmm, Western bliss…

14:30 hrs: We were finally on our way to the Old City. We had this idea that the Old City would be a walled area (it was) with narrow streets (they were) and therefore nice and quiet (it wasn’t). Beep beeeeeep! It is not a quick ‘toot-toot’ in India, the use of the horn is so lengthy that there is actually time for you to reach over and pull the man’s finger off the button and occasionally Guy takes pleasure in doing so as often bikes can’t go particularly fast. The horn is also so loud that we’re sure they upgrade them to be louder than the next man’s. It’s irritating. We generally walk around shouting at them (out of pain) and end up walking along with our fingers in our ears. On this occasion, the last straw that broke the Rajisthani’s camel’s back was a couple of kids not old enough to ride, on an over-sized motorbike. “Hello, Hello” they mocked. They were right behind us, the wheel almost touching the calves of our legs. But they started hissing and clicking, the way they attempt to attract a female mate, we went mental at them. I’m not sure what the locals thought with us shouting at the tops of our voices; they were still all expressionless. The two boys just laughed nervously.

We had read that Jaipur wasn’t particularly enjoyable in terms of the touts, the traffic and they’re right. It’s pretty unbearable. Today there has been an overuse of the word ‘Hello’. And I’ve not seen much of a ‘ Pink City ‘ for which it is famed. It’s more of a ‘White-with-a-splash-of-orange City’.

15:30hrs: Finally the highlight of our day; The World’s Largest Sun Dial, the Jantar Mantar. We paid some rupees and hired a guide. His red stained teeth were a bit distracting as was the elongated way he spoke like a Tarot card reader, “Siiiiirrr, you commmme with meeeee”. We amused ourselves with the camera and had to pretend where the sunlight might fall as the light was fading fast.

When the sun finally disappeared from the whole of the site, we too disappeared. We wandered along the streets around the edge of the Old City taking a few more pics and dodging the snake charmer whose snake was attempting an escape across the pavement. We were quite far from our hotel so we jumped in a rickshaw. At this point Mum rang on the mobile which was a great distraction from an otherwise difficult day; a bit of home and familiarity. Mum joined us for part of the ride dodging other drivers and we somehow managed to hear each other over the obnoxious honking horns. In the background, Guy was directing the driver, because, although he had waved us to get in, he didn’t actually know where he was going. We ended up at the wrong end of a one-way street and made a quick escape across the traffic as he shouted after us wanting more money (even though we knew it was more than he would’ve got from a local).

We were walking up the road, distracted looking for a bookshop that it turns out doesn’t exist, when we heard screeches and some metal crunching. A family car had knocked a bloke off his motorbike. I turned in time to see the motorcyclist, his body still skidding along the ground, lifting his bare head up (ie no helmet) to save it from the concrete. This was our 1st first-hand crash. It’s amazing it’s taken this long to see one. Thankfully all were ok. It was unclear whose fault it was; the driver, the motorcyclist, or the policeman who had been directing traffic. We’re also unsure if the motorcyclist accepted the 500 rupees from the car driver – that’s only about £6 so it won’t cover his cracked helmet or repair his bike. Furthermore, it was unclear if the motorcyclist had been wearing his helmet or if he had just been holding it in his hand. So many people ride with their helmet anywhere but on their head or, if they are wearing it, then it’s not done up. People are fined only 100 rupees by the Police if they’re caught without one but most of them seem more concerned about the fine than of killing themselves. The driver kept patronisingly joking and rubbing the shoulder of the motorcyclist as if to say ‘Please don’t report me, you’re ok mate’. We left them to it and caught our second rickshaw, again turning into a one-way street but this time the guy just ignored it and kept cycling down it.

17:30 hrs: Arrive home, covered in a grimy coating of sand and dust, into our wonderful hotel. Water, a coke and coffee, plus a shower and a good dinner helped restore our calm.

21:00 hrs: Lying on the bed in our comfortable surroundings we count the score on our To Do List. It’s 3:1 to India. Guy turns to speak but is silenced by the Islamic call to prayer blasting so loudly through our window I honestly couldn’t hear his words. “You realise that will go off again at 5am tomorrow?”.

Thankfully, the next day was 100% better. We restricted our To Do List to one single point and it worked. We went to the City Palace and thoroughly enjoyed it.