Hello! Jaipur!

All I knew of Jaipur when we first planed to visit it was that it was the rather large capital city of Rajasthan, a state divided into the desert regions of the Marwar and the hilly green regions of Mawar, and one of the most popular tourist destinations in India. We elected to spend 6 days there. This is somewhere between 0 and 6 days too many, depending on your point of view.

We rolled into town on the 10th of November, stepping out of our air-con carriage four hours later than expected into a sea of touts. "Rickshaw sir? Where are you going, friend? Hotel? Hello, sir! Hello!" They left barely enough space between the words for us to think about how we'd get to our destination: the dining room of a family who had invited us to their home that evening. We needed to find our way to a phone fast, and figured that we could lose our clingy friends in a phone booth.

The touts had other ideas however, and all though our phone call, we we assailed by a shouting man, who had changed his strategy after a 15-minute pursuit. His zeal for customer service had changed into something like, "You are from America! We wait for you people all year, and want so little! And you have so much! Please! Ten Rupees!" The line between businessman and beggar is sometimes very thin.



The conversation with our hosts, like our friendship with the tout, had not gone well. Perhaps because we were four hours late for our phone call, the only response was "Wrong Number!" We were thus unceremoniously dumped from our social agenda, and scurried off by cycle-rickshaw to the Atithi Guest House. Not only were we squeezed out from the edges of the rickshaw canopy by our bags into the dark, but even while we rolled down the street, auto-rickshaw drivers would pull up and tell us, "You should take auto! More room!"

The saving grace of the day had to be the room, which, despite being more expensive than the one we'd booked and somehow lost to another customer, was very very nice by our standards. It had a soft bed, a working ceiling fan, and a hot shower. Paradise, man -- Paradise. Still, if we'd hoped that the madness would end there, our second day was a rude awakening to the fact that, in India, surprise hides around every corner.

The highlight of our first full day had to be Jantar Mantar, an 18th century astronomical observatory created by the star-gazing Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II. Exploring the place, I felt like Jack (of beanstalk fame) climbing through the instruments of some giant scientist. These things use the sun to time seconds. To read the instruments, you have to climb some four stories of stairs. That's the only exercise I've been getting out here, so you can see I'm making the most of it by running.


Our day seemed to be going well enough until all forward progress was stopped by the crowd of white-capped Muslim men congregating in the streets. If only we'd known that the day marked not only Diwali, probably the biggest Hindu holiday in Rajasthan, but also the celebration of the end of Ramadan, Id ul Fitr. That explained the 100,000 men on blankets blocking every path to our lunch.

Liking it or not, we were treated to 90 minutes of worship, followed by a sea of men clearing out of the streets. Marita was one of very few women immersed in the madness, making her the most interesting target for stares, and -- and Marita was most shocked to discover -- a pinch on the butt.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dean is busy doing grad school applications so The Girl will take over this post with some photos and Dean can update the text later if he has time. This post is also out of order with the rest as we were in Jaipur quite a while ago.

So yes, I was harrassed by a teenager playing around with his group of friends. I was already quite feedup with the whistles and calls, but the touching crossed the line for me and I lost it! I easily spotted the guilty culprit with the look of feigned innocence- quite similar to the look that I have often observed on my brother when he is up to no good. I spun around, yelled an obsencity and began to whack the side of his head like a cat batting her prey. The boy was in shock, yet made no protest and only cowered back with embarrassment. I expected Dean to be right behind me, but in all the activity of the crowd, he hadn't heard or seen a thing and had kept on walking. Sigh... Well, at least that kid will think twice before trying anything on another foreign girl.

We did have several highlights in Jaipur- one was our Servas day host, Dr. Jain. It turned out that he is a writer too and has a weekly column in the newspaper, a Sunday night interview show on TV, and a radio segment as well! We had fun meeting twice to just learn about each other and our countries.

Dr. Jain Khandela, our Servas host, and his wife with Diwali candles:



Our stay in Jaipur also overlapped the Hindi holiday Diwali, where everyone decorates their place with flowers, candles, and Christmas lights. And fireworks seemed to be essential as well, especially if you could blow them up near us as we were trying to walk by on the sidewalk.

As a tradition, Diwali sweets are passed to neighbors and many shops offer quite a selection. Most of them are milk based, very sweet, and sometimes wrapped in a thin, edible silver foil with a few pistachios. We found a few favorites for breakfast one morning, as pictured below. (But nobody else would really eat these for breakfast.)



The day before Diwali, the decorations were in full swing at a shopping mall that we passed. We were approached by a man who said that he wanted to interview us. After being hassled all day we didn't believe him until we saw the camera crew behing him. So after a few minutes, we were in his interview about how foreigners like Diwali, even though it was not yet Diwali. So as you can imagine, our comments were not too interesting and he just wanted us to say that Diwali was a lot like the American Christmas. But we made the news the next night.



We did not get to see our news fame as our new room didn't have a TV. We had switched to a cheaper, very basic room to save money. Aside from the swarms of mosquitos the room was okay, but unfortunately it had some faulty wiring that Dean discovered in the shower. We didn't know why there was electric tape bundling the faucet handles, but Dean found out when he touched a handle while showing. I heard a yelp as he made the discovery!

To make up for the cheap room, we ate very well. Jaipur is a place of culinary excellence. We had some great chicken tandoori, a nice change after eating only veg for so long. And we tried many of the Rajasthani dishes, quite different from the rest of other food. We also experience Lassiwalla, the famous shop for enjoying a creamy yogurty drink in a disposable terracotta cup. Made a great breakfast one morning.



One of the Jaipur highlights was the Rajmandir cinema, hailed as one of the best in India. I would say that it rivaled American cinemas as well. The lobby was like a Disneyworld palace with pastel lights and swirly ceiling designs. The film called Veer-Zaara was entirely in Hindi, but as a love story it was easy enough to figure out the plot which included many deadly bus crashes. And everytime the camera introduced the first glimpse of a star actor, the audience went nuts and began cheering and whooping. We were quite amused by this!

We also noticed that everyone likes to let their cell phone ring during movies and then answers it after a few rings, perhaps to let people know that they are watching a movie. And the couples in the movies never quite kiss but get very close to it. It was amazing that in a dramatic love story there was not one kiss, even between married couples.

In other news, Dean visited the barber shop for a haircut and ended up with a nice haircut, plus a back and scalp massage and a strange facial that included a small sanding tool to grind away his face and cloth wiped in his ears. To show me the progress, the man would display the dirty tissues. It was a bit overpriced but interesting to watch. However, the ordeal was a bit painful for poor unsuspecting Dean as one of the massage techniques was to snap the nerve running through the armpit down the arm. I didn't know what was happening, but Dean was saying, "Yeow! What was that?"



Another afternoon we took a break on a bench near Albert Hall, home of a dusty museum and 1000 pigeons. Notice the different types of transport.



Other activities included shopping, but as this is tourist central, the prices were so inflated that we couldn't get many things without some serious bargaining and didn't make too many friends in that process as they were all hoping for anb easy target. I did manage to get a pair of beaded sandals and Dean tried on a few of the traditional long pajama type shirts that most men wear during the day. It looked nice on him but was way to overpriced to consider.