The East by Occident: Jaipur and Pushkar

Jaipur (by Pan-Pan)

The best thing about Jaipur was the hotel we stayed in. It was a haveli, which is the old mansion of former Maharajahs. The place was huge, and had a peaceful garden full of attentive waiters. Our room was small, but tastefully decorated, and clean. Jaipur is full of vendors selling things, and we passed by many shops with folded silks and chiffons piled floor to ceiling. They were of all different colours (pinks, oranges, turqoises), all of them covered with decorative gold details. It was pretty overwhelming in fact, the whole shopping experience, but much better than Agra (which had so many hawkers and sellers and chaos that it basically made James lose the will to live for an afternoon). In the end, we bought some nice pashminas and blockprint fabrics and souvenir elephants. Oh one more note about Agra: we got there the very night the city celebrated Taj Mahal being named one of the new 7 wonders of the world, so there were film crews and festivities everywhere.

(our friendly shopkeeper in Jaipur. If you look closely, you'll even see some of the pashminas we bought!)

(We did see a few sights in Jaipur, one of them being Jantar Mantar, an ancient observatory. Right away, James started using an ancient astronomical tool to figure out whether there was going to be rain the next day...just kidding. We had no idea how those things worked.)

Pushkar (by James)

Pushkar is called a "mini-Varanasi" because it's also considered a holy city, on a sacred body of water. It is a very small city (so small that it's not even connected to the main bus lines) situated around a lake. Like Varanasi, there are ghats leading to the water on all sides. Also like Varanasi, there are tons of cows wandering about or lazing by the water. There are also lots of Indian holy men or "sadhus", identifiable by their long hair and beards, and the watering cans they carry around--their only possessions.

Because it's so atmospheric, the city is a real hot spot for tourists. There are a huge number of foriegners here, especially Israelie. (India is a hot spot for young Israelies to travel to after they complete their mandatory stint in the army, and before they go to university.) The city has a really hippy vibe to it. Apparently it's another part of India where the hippies came (and still come).

The city is also a true Rajhasthan experience, as its located on the edge of the desert. There are lots of camels going through the streets hauling carts.

We've had a really good time in this place. Our hotel is right on the lake, so every morning we just have to step outside onto the roof and look down at the water and the ghat right below us.
Today we went on a "camel safari", a three hour excursion-by-camel outside the town and around a nearby mountain. It was desert, but not sand dune-type desert-more like scrub brush, short grass and only the occasional tree. This was a painful experience. First, riding a camel isn't that comfortable. In fact, it got downright uncomfortable. Then, I got a face full of thorns when I failed to see a low hanging thorny branch and move my face in time. There was no blood but my face and neck got scratched up. And lastly, when I was mounting my camel after taking a break, he rolled over and knocked me off! Luckily I only fell in some sand so I didn't get hurt. My camel--"Krishna"--was really ill-tempered. It would always groan and make weird noises, and several times it tried to turn around and run in the wrong direction. I always get the ornery animals. Pan-Pan's camel, "Joni", was much better tempered.

Later in the day, we went back to the tourist agency to pick up our motorbike that we had rented. The plan was to ride around some of the deserted stretches of road outside of town. Well, this didn't go according to plan at all. First, I spent twenty minutes or so trying to learn how to operate a full on motorcycle. At one point, I got it started and before I knew what was happening, I was 200m down the road (kind of like what happened to you, Mom). Then the thing sputtered and died, and I had to some local boys to help me start it again. Eventually it was decided that it would be better if we took the gearless, smaller bike, which was almost more like a scooter, and much easier to operate. So we took this one and set out down the road, with Pan-Pan holding on tight and both of us generally scared as hell of the giant Indian "Tata" trucks that would barrel past us on our right. If at this point in the story, mothers are freaking out (and I should add that there were no helmets, even though we requested them!), they need not worry because our motorcycle adventure ended very quickly. We barely made it five minutes up the road when the damn thing died, or ran out of gas. I was really mad because the guy had had trouble getting it started before, and I asked if he was sure the thing worked. He said yes, we just had to drive to a gas station to fill it up, which we were attempting to do. Anyways, we stopped in front of this store/home(?) and this man got his son to siphon gas from his bike to get us enough to make it to the gas station. He charged us 40 rupees--hardly altruistic of him. Anyway, we didn't make it 20m before it died again, so this time we walked the bike to a phone and called the place and demanded that they come and bring us back. 20 minutes later another bike showed up, and after they tried fixing, they drove me and Pan-Pan back. Surprising enough, we even managed to get our money back. They offered us a working bike but we said "no thanks, we've had enough motorcycling for today". Then we went back to our place.

Tonight, at midnight, we are catching a sleeper bus out of Pushkar to Udaipur. Supposedly it's a delux bus, air-conditioned and very nice, but I'm not expecting this, even though we paid for it. In India, you have to get used to being ripped off in hundreds of big and small ways. So long as it has a sleeper and some open-able windows, I'll be fine.

Pictures:

(Two views of Pushkar from our hotel room window (left) and balcony (right))