Jaipur, Part 1

Note: if you are my mom or dad and have somehow gotten hold of the URL for this, please, please, PLEASE do not read this post until I am back in the US. I am currently in good health and returning home in a little over a week. I’m not doing any of this stuff again, so knowing about it will only make you unjustifiably nervous. Plus you'll enjoy it more when I tell you in person anyway.

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They say that truth is often stranger than fiction. I think that at the very least it tends to be more entertaining. Either way, I can tell you that this story WILL be the definitive tale of my trip to India, and one that I will consider life-changing many years from now. It also makes a great blog post.

This weekend contained the rare coincidence of Indian Independence Day (August 15) and the Festival of Sisterhood (there’s another name for it, but I don’t know what it is – it’s according to the Indian lunar calendar and thus is on a different day every year). The ensuing three-day weekend provided a perfect opportunity for a trip except for the issue of companionship – because of the Festival of Sisterhood, every Hindu in Delhi was returning to their parents homes and was unable to travel. I originally had planned to accompany one of my friends to her family’s home in Hyderabad, but the combination of being unable to stay on a military base (her father is in the navy, and I am not an Indian citizen) and the fact that the plane ride alone would cost 600 USD, sort of spelled the end of that plan.

So two days before Independence Day, and I had plans for a three-day weekend staring at my wall (I even had a spot picked out). But it was also my next to last weekend in India, and I couldn’t let that stand, so I got a friend to help me book a last minute train ticket and a hotel in Jaipur, the Pink City and the capital of the desert-state Rajasthan. There are no train tickets available for Thursday night, Friday or Sunday, so we settle on a 6:30 am Saturday train with a return by bus. I am supposed to get the bus ticket upon arrival in Rajasthan.

I spend Friday in boredom – it’s Independence Day, but it’s sort of like the US Independence Day without big fireworks shows – just not all that much to see. I go to bed that night excited, and awake at 3:30, a full hour before my 4:30 am alarm. Note the time: if you are careful here, you will be able to spot at least one misfortune that befalls me for every two hours I am awake today.

The cab company I got to take me to the train charges extra if you begin the ride before 5 am, so I wisely settled on 5 as my pickup time. Unfortunately, what they neglected to tell me was that if the cab gets there early, regardless of the time you booked the it, they will still charge you extra if you get in at 4:55. And the cab driver doesn’t speak English. The ride to the train station costs me an extra 100 rupees or so (about a 33% hike). Yikes. One misfortune in the bag. Trust me though, this is one of the minor ones.

It is still dark when we arrive at the station. While it is early in the morning, there are still over 100 people waiting, including a couple of foreign tourists, easily recognizable by their large, stuffed backpacks. Oh, yeah, and the fact that they’re white.

There’s a voice recording that announces the train arrivals and departures. Unfortunately, they missed the entire point of a speaker system, and opted to begin each message with a loud “TA-DA” just to make sure you weren’t confused into thinking it was the guy right beside you yelling directly in your ear. And there was one going off maybe every 30 seconds. At 5:30 am.

At around 6:00, THE VOICE (and I say it in all caps because it was almost as pervasive as the “TA-DA” announcing it) says something in Hindi that includes my train number, and all of a sudden my train is no longer listed on the departure board. Figuring it’s been delayed an hour or two, I sit down for about ten minutes, then begin to explore my surroundings. I stop close to some steps leading to the train platforms, and while I am standing there a man gestures to me. I walk over to him.

“Which train?” he asks.

I show him my ticket, and he points somewhere off in the distance. I look, and see in the darkness a hidden platform.

“That track,” he says.

“And it’s on time?”

“Yes,” he says, a grin spreading across his face.

I walk over to the platform, and sure enough there it is, ready to go. I take a seat, and stare out the window as the train pulls out of the station.

Two hours later, the man next to me starts a conversation. His name is Kaifi, a Muslim from Delhi. He and I talk about the differences between India and the US, religion, work, even our names (which surprisingly, mean nearly the same thing). He is traveling to Jaipur for the Festival of Sisterhood.

A quick bit about the Festival of Sisterhood. It is a Hindu ritual recognizing the bond between brother and sister. Sisters take a band or a bracelet and tie it around their brother’s wrist. That’s the formal ceremony, at least. The fun part is that often girls will approach men who are not their brother and try to give them the bracelet, making them their brother – this is apparently particularly common with children, and leads to girls chasing guys around the playground (for a change). In fact, my coworkers told me that if I saw a girl approaching me with a bracelet, (at least, if she was hot), to run like the devil himself was at my heels.

Anyway (and I hope I have this right), Kaifi met a young girl at a train station one day and helped her with her bags. Through another series of events, they became pretty close and stayed in touch, and became sort of like brother and sister to each other. Kaifi, being Muslim, does not celebrate the Festival, but his “sister” does. And so this year, his sister was asking him if he would come down for the festival. Kaifi originally said no, but was now taking a 5-hour train ride to Jaipur with the intent of surprising her.

While I am talking with Kaifi, we arrive at the train station in what seems like no time. Note that I have now been awake for 8 hours and only one thing has really gone wrong. Don’t worry…I’ll catch up soon.

When I exit the train station, I am immediately hounded by a bunch of rickshaw drivers. I pick one who, surprisingly, gives me a fair price with almost no bargaining. Be wary of that sort, by the way.

As I tell him which hotel I am going to, he immediately pipes up. “No, no, no, that hotel is no good.” He tries to explain why in some garbled Hindi that I can’t understand, but another rickshaw driver comes over, apparently hoping for my business. When he hears us talking about hotels, he asks my driver something in Hindi. When my driver responds with the hotel name, he looks at me and goes “oh…that hotel is no good.”

I have never seen this before, but I recognize it immediately as a scam – and a bad one at that. Besides, my friend called his uncle, who lives in Jaipur, and had him book me the hotel. I can’t just turn it down.

I get into the auto, and the driver starts asking me about my visit to Jaipur – what I plan on seeing, things like that. He brings up the hotel again, and warns me that it’s not good and that I should let him take me to one that is a third of the price.

“Really, is it close to tourist things?” I ask. He doesn’t understand me.

We pull up to the hotel. He tells me to go check the room and figure out if I like it, and that he will wait here. I tell him it’s ok. He asks if I want him to show me around the city or go to some of the touristy spots. I respectfully decline.

He leaves, and I go inside, to face problem #3 – I am now operating under a false identity. According to my reservation, I am now a member of a certain corporation known for making baby shampoo – the name of which will be left out here with the thought that, since I am obviously NOT a member of said baby shampoo making corporation, there was obviously something awry.

The minute I walk in, the manager comes over, shakes my hand, introduces himself, and tells me that as a member of this baby shampoo-making corporation, I will be getting a discount – which turns out to be what I was told by my friend that the room would cost. I am baffled, so after hearing the price and inspecting the room, I try to call my friend to just make sure this is what was intended.

Problem #4 – no cell phone reception.

I go on ahead and decide to operate under my new false identity, and so Nic of the baby shampoo-making corporation signs everything he needs to sign and heads to the bus depot. Where he learns that there is not a single bus available for his return on Sunday. The first bus available bus is 8:30 am on Monday, and I buy a ticket while I still can.

Frustrated, I do the logical thing, and wander around until I am totally, unbelievably lost.

Yeah, I know…genius, right?

The walk is actually quite nice, though. The people here are extremely friendly, with kids jumping in front of my camera to get their picture taken (I have a really cute one that will be on photobucket once I upload) and walking alongside me. Everybody says hi and waves. However, there are some…issues.

Take, for example, the man who pulls away from his group of friends as I approach and starts to walk beside me. We talk, he introduces himself, asks my name and where I’m from, and then says that he loves the US, and wants to sit down for tea and have a talk with me about it.

I tell him respectfully no. He asks again.

When he realizes that I’m not going to come for tea with him right now, we turn back to conversation. He says he is trying to learn English and would like to practice. I tell him that it’s a very good thing to know. He asks me where I am staying. I tell him I am staying in a hotel. He asks which one. I ignore the question. He asks if I am traveling alone. I lie through my teeth.

Then he asks me again to come sit and have tea with him. I turn him down again. Please note that I am currently in a strange city, on the other side of the world, alone, with no cell phone reception, fighting to keep from being conned tooth and nail by a guy who is in the middle of his own neighborhood. What could possibly make this any worse?

…

At that point, it begins to rain.

…

Seriously. I’m not making this up.

The conversation continues relatively as follows:

“You know, you can see all these touristy things all you want, but you should really get to know the real Jaipur.”

“I know. That’s why I’m on a walk over here.”

“But you could get to know Jaipur even better if you sat down and talked to somebody from Jaipur.”

“I know, but to be honest, I’m away from my friends right now and I don’t know that I can trust you. I don’t mean to be rude, but…”

“No, you aren’t being rude.”

A moment of silence.

“You know, I know there are a lot of people here who come and want to take your money because you are a rich American. But…they don’t know how hard you work for it.”

I don’t have a response, other than a seething anger that he immediately assumes that I have money when the only reason I'm able to be here is because I'm being funded (and thanks to those guys, who I know definitely read the blog). I hide it though, and just say that we’re not all rich, and that I’m not rich. I refrain from chewing him out.

He offers to show me around if I get tea with him first. I ask him how I get to the City Palace, a tourist attraction that is not near my hotel (although I tell him it is). He says he’ll get me a rickshaw, and begins to talk to one of the nearby ones. They’re obviously not bartering for a price.

I wait for him to get engrossed in talking to them, and then start walking away. When he notices I am leaving, he calls out to me. I turn and wave and continue walking.

Two blocks later, after he is out of sight, I get a rickshaw back to my hotel. I walk in and collapse on my bed for a minute, before deciding to venture out again. Mysteriously, in the time between abandoning the con man and getting to the hotel, my cell phone has connected again. But now it’s not sending texts and nobody I know is picking up the phone. Not a worry for right now, though.

Eight mishaps. But we’re not out of the woods yet.

When I get back down to the lobby, two things that are important happen: I sign up for a tour of Chowki Dhani, this traditional Rajasthani restaurant/theme park. The price is 700 rupees, including the ticket to Chowki Dhani. I confirm that two or three times. The second important thing is that the manager tells me that the places I would like to go touring at are only about a mile away, and that I could walk there.

The rain has stopped, and so I start out on another walk.

Not five minutes later, another guy comes up to me. This one is a little better with his con. He talks to me a little first, then starts asking the personal questions. Am I traveling alone? Of course not. What’s my name? Phil.

“This today is the festival of sisterhood. Sisters give brothers a bracelet like this:” he pulls out a bracelet of red yarn with some gold tassels. “You are my friend, and so I want to give you this bracelet.”

“I don’t know, dude. I don’t know you very well, and I don’t think I’d feel comfortable taking your bracelet. Especially if your sister gave it to you.”

He looks hurt, but changes the subject. “So the people you are traveling with…two couples? Boy and girl?”

“No. I’m with my team.”

“Your team? How many people?”

“Six.”

“But there are 11 on a cricket team. My cricket team has 11. Where is the rest of your team?”

“No. It’s my wrestling team.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Wrestling…like, beating people up.”

The look on his face was jaw-droppingly, eye-wideningly PRICELESS. But he decided to go for the con anyway. “I would really like for you to meet my mother. Will you come back to my house with me to meet her?”

Ummm…no.

I dodge another couple feeble attempts, and then I ask him where City Palace is, that I am meeting my friends there. He says he will get me a bicycle rickshaw. The rickshaw driver gives me a price that is heinously expensive, and I then demand one that is equally cheap. My new “friend” begins yelling at the rickshaw driver. Meanwhile, I sneak away, grab the next rickshaw I can find, and get him to take me to an attraction called the Hawa Mahal, or Temple of the Winds.

On the way, the rickshaw driver starts acting funny. He stops in the middle of the street two or three times and gets out to adjust the back wheel. He is calling out to other rickshaw drivers and asking in Hindi for a price to go to Hawa Mahal. Finally I notice: the bicycle has a huge crack in it, and is about to break in half.

It has been approximately two hours since I arrived in Jaipur.

He finds a rickshaw driver who is willing to split the fare with him 50/50 after we get a ways down the road.

In 1876, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Albert came to visit Jaipur, and in preparation, the entire city was dyed pink. Not sure if pink was Prince Albert’s choice of color, but the end result was a great reception for the Prince and a new name for Jaipur: the Pink City. As I ride by in the rickshaw, the city is a swath of pink dotted by the whites and grays of newer shops. There is a large wall surrounding the inner city, and we go through that. A few minutes later, we arrive at the Temple of the Winds.

The temple is a (pink) structure built into the surrounding city. It really isn’t a temple – it is a set of open air spaces and walkways – a building with no roof. The side of the Temple that is facing outwards is quite ornate, and the other walls barely exist – once you get to the second floor it is like being on the roof. Other than the lack of walls, the twisting passageways on the sides and the number of locked doors remind me of a Zelda game, and a structure that looks like a block with a crescent moon in the center confirms to me that this is where Miyamoto’s team conceived the idea. Besides – its name is the Wind Temple, and the Jal Mahal, or Water Temple, is nearby.

With some confusion because of the passageways and some trick walls, I make my way up to the top of the structure. There is a small crowd up there, and I get an Asian man to take my photo. We chat for a quick minute – he is from China, and I ask him why he is in India instead of watching the Olympics. He says he wanted to come to India. I say “Go China” in what I’m sure is a very bad, very garbled Chinese (I only know the phrase because my friend Zoe mentioned it in an E-mail to me), and he responds with “Go USA.” Touching moment indeed.

I leave and go on to the next attraction, the Jantar Mantar, or magical instrument, which is next door geographically, although tricky to get to. On the way there, a young child starts walking in front of me. “Jantar Mantar?” he asks. “Yes,” I say. He begins to lead the way (which is definitely helpful). Before too long, a veritable army of five children has joined us, walking in front of me.

We reach the entrance to the Jantar Mantar, and one of the more talkative children, possibly the only one who knows English, turns to me and says “Ok. Give us our rupee now.” You could tell that they expected it, probably because every white man who passed that way before probably gave one to them. I gave them one apiece, not only because they were cute but because there was no way this cycle was possibly going to break. May as well just go along with it.

The Jantar Mantar is a series of large devices for measuring time, the season, the constellations, etc. It is sort of like a very modern (built in the 1700s, I believe), much more Indian Stonehenge, and includes the biggest sundial (or equivalent) that I have ever seen – it actually has steps in the center so you can walk up to the top, although the steps are now blocked.

After Jantar Mantar I went to look at the City Palace, but the tickets were expensive and I had to stay an extra night at the hotel, so I decided to pass and go home. In retrospect, that was probably my biggest mistake all day. And no, the craziness isn’t over yet.

I finish Jantar Mantar, and got ripped off by a rickshaw driver on the way back. This time, his boss says the driver will take me to a Western Union to change money, and he totally doesn’t. The guy doesn’t speak English, and I don’t know how to communicate to him an idea as complex as “We agreed on going to a money changer and then the hotel,” so I just let it lie – the price he charged was somewhat reasonable anyway.

I go into the hotel and rest for a bit, then come downstairs for the Chowki Dhani tour. When I get in the taxi, the manager of the tour service asks me to give him 500 rupees up front. No problem, but I’m smelling scam.

The driver drives me into the middle of nowhere. Luckily, Chowki Dhani is also in the middle of nowhere, so I’m ok. While I’m standing in line for a ticket, I realize the con: he’s making me pay for my own ticket, which makes the whole trip 120 rupees more expensive. I explicate very briefly to myself, and then walk in.

Chowki Dhani is a world unto itself. Originally created as a shack that served all-vegetarian, traditional Rajasthani food, it has expanded to include games, rides, and performances.

In the rush of arrival I had skipped lunch, but before dinner, I wandered around a little bit. Women with 8 pots balanced on their heads danced on daggers, shards of glass, and spikes (I believe all of them were blunt and not dangerous, but it was impressive nonetheless). There was a magic show, a puppet show, and a large number of musicians and dancing. Children were getting elephant rides, while adults were shooting real arrows at a target. There was also a haunted house, and some museums and shops.

After walking for a bit, I decided to sit down to dinner. According to my friend, previous dinners involved the Chowki Dhani staff spooning food onto your plate until you could eat no more. The format had changed recently, however, and was now a buffet. The meal was still vegetarian, though.

I got a plate and tried every dish they had. My favorite was the Alu Piaz, or potato and onions. Every dish, though, was buttery and delicious, and I ate until I was full.

I wandered around and watched some more shows. Some were good, others were boring. I had said that I wanted to ride an elephant before I left, so I rode one. I was out of change, otherwise I would have ridden the camel too, but I had already sort of done that, so I was happy.

Towards 9 pm (the party goes on until around 1 am if you stick around long enough), I began to watch some traditional Indian women’s dancing. I was in the dark, towards the back, but at some point, I happened to make eye contact with one of the women on stage, who gestured to me to come up. She tried to teach me a couple of her dance moves, but I have trouble doing modern men’s dance moves – learning traditional women's dance is just a little out of my league.

And then after about 30 seconds comes the bomb. She looks at me and furrows her brow questioningly. “Tip?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Money? Tip? Change?”

“Oh, uh…I’m out of change.” I still had 9 rupees in my pocket, plus an insurance 500-rupee note that I was not about to break.

“Tip?”

This went on for another couple seconds, until I realized that not only was I having a conversation with this woman on the middle of the dance floor, but that I was no longer dancing. Given what I had seen of Jaipur so far, I figured that the odds of her making a scene if I walked away were not in my favor. So I dug the coins out of my pocket, turned, and walked out of Chowki Dhani.

Now I want to be clear about this: I had fun at Chowki Dhani. A lot of fun. But I just could not abide the image I had gotten of Jaipur today, and this woman’s complete shamelessness in asking for a tip after humiliating me on the dance floor was just too much.

I walked back to the driver, who took me to the cab and we left to go to the hotel. I spent the entire ride doing two things: fuming about the woman at Chowki Dhani, and swearing to blow a gasket if the taxi driver asked for a tip.

He didn’t ask for a tip. He asked for the rest of the payment – the other 200 rupees.

I tried to explain to him that I had to pay for my own ticket and was not about to get cheated again, but he didn’t understand. Finally, I resisted enough that he decided to come in so we could get the hotel staff to sort it out.

He talked to one of the men behind the counter, who then turned to me and said in a brusque, dismissive voice “give me 200 rupees.”

I took a step back and started defending myself. The argument started to grow heated, me talking in English and the concierge in Hindi, neither of us understanding the other.

Finally, another concierge came out. He spoke better English. “What is the problem?” he asked.

I explained to him the situation. It took about 4 tries. Finally, he responded. “It is a misunderstanding. The 700 rupees did not include the ticket.”

I responded with the honest truth. “But he told me it did. I specifically asked him. ‘The ticket is included?’ I asked, and he said ‘Yes.’ ‘And the food?’ ‘Yes, yes, it is all included.’”

“Yes, but the price is 700 rupees. It is a misunderstanding.”

“I know, but I would not have signed up for it had he asked for 700 rupees. That price is INSANE.”

He shakes his head. “But the price is 700 rupees for the cab.”

We go back and forth for a little longer. By this point I am apologetic, but unwilling to pay.

Finally, the concierge has a solution. “You keep the money for now, and I will talk to the manager in the morning.”

“Fine,” I say. “But can I talk to him as well?”

“Sure.” He agrees. He then explains the plan to the driver, who agrees. He leaves for the night.

I go up to my room, furious. I pace for about 10 minutes, then lie back on my bed. After a while, I start to wonder: I know what he said and what I said, but what is a fair price? Was I cheating him by keeping the money? Or was he cheating me by making me pay it? And either way, should each of us get something because it was, legitimately, a miscommunication?

While I was pacing my belt broke.

Thoughts racing, I tossed and turned for an hour or two, and then finally went to sleep at around midnight with a solution to the problem. But like any good cliffhanger, you’ll have to hear about that in the next post.


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As an aside, a number of people have told me so far that these adventures would make a good book. While I was hesitant at first, this trip to Jaipur has made me wonder if a book might actually make sense – there are a lot of funny moments and a good number of overarching plotlines that I could put together. I’m thinking sort of like Vikram Seth’s From Heaven Lake except a little funnier and dealing with a different set of themes (the clash between the traditional Indian Hindu culture and modern Indian Western culture and what that says about American culture and whatnot)

So if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask whoever has read this far to post a comment, acknowledging that you’re reading it (so I can tell how many of my friends are interested enough to read the blogs), and (voluntarily, of course) answering a few (meaning any of the following) questions:

1.)Do you think I could pull this off as a book? Keep in mind that many of the stories (Jaipur, Agra, Megan in the Hospital) may wind up being put in practically word-for-word. This is a question both about me as a writer and about the stories in general.
2.)What improvements would you like to see made to my writing style? What (other than an overarching connection between everything blogged so far) do you think a book would need that these posts don’t have?
3.)What other things about India would you be interested in hearing about?

Post anonymously if you don’t want me to know who you are. I know there are enough people that have read these blogs in the past that I won’t be able to know who it is from one comment. But please be honest – lavish, undeserved praise is one thing that gets me upset, and I genuinely do love hearing about how I can improve.