Good evening friends of the Intersquid,
How are you? (Really, how are you? Please leave comments!)
Soz (as my one of my smoothie making accomplices Anna Campbell would say) this post is rather delayed, I don't even know where to start!
I think we left off after my arrival in Udaipur?
Well I can tell you, everything about Udaipur was lovely. The hotel (or haveli) was lovely; (hot water + clean sheets = happy Alex). The town was lovely and so were the people, oh and the food? You guessed it, lovely too. It was generally a very relaxing week and Tom got a suit made which to say he is over-joyed about would be a massive understatement.
"This suit is tailored, Alex! Do you understand? TAI-lored".
After being there a week we made lots of new friends, taught a keen little boy how to play "jingle bell" on guitar and Tom hit one on the motor bike ride count. We even managed to hire a car with our very own driver to take us around for the rest of our time in Rajasthan (it ended up costing just a bit more than taking trains and is so much less of a hassle, well it should have been).
So after Udaipur, we were off with our new driver Yunus Khan on the road to Jodhpur with a stop off at a magical fort hidden high on a rocky cliff like something out of 'The Lord of The Rings'. Unfortunately, not long after our car pulled away from Udaipur my memories of the white city began to fade away and their places were filled with new ones involving bed bugs, vomiting and the usual supicious smell of urine.
The car trip to Jodhpur is a bit of a blur, all I can really remember is taking a quick look at the fort, having a spew and stopping at a restaurant where they appeared to place a pot of chicken curry on a hot plate when some foreigners rocked up, only to pull it back off the flame and sit it in a dusty corner when they politely declined and opted for a Seven-Up.
Salmonella anyone?
What I do recall though, was some really interesting village life where gorgeous dirty children waved to us with big white smiles and colourful saris as we hurdled through the countryside like a moving fish bowl.
The drive itself was less white knucked than my previous account and things with Mr Khan seemed to be going okay and even though he spoke much less English than first thought, we exchanged quite a few smiles and nods and he even opened the door when I got out of the car.
When we arrived in Jodhpur we saw yet another impressive fort, this one is set imposingly on a huge red rock (for lack of a better word) over the town. After visiting the sights of Jodhpur we ate some pretty weird noodles at an Indian fast food joint but other than that, the town does not bear too much of a mention.
Feeling pretty forted out we asked Mr Khan to take us to Bikaner so we could experience a bit of Indian desert magic. Unfortunately (haha pun anyone?), Bikaner was where things took a turn for the worst. Yunus began to get lazy... There was no more door opening, a lot more commission talk and he began to fart more regularly.
Mental downgrading of Yunus's tip had begun. He had moved from 2000 INR to 1500 INR.
The most annoying thing was when he started telling us the car could not go to the places we asked, that we probably didn't want to go at all and it became really difficult to get him to even drop us at our guesthouse.Obviously our denial of any of his commission happy stores was starting to take a toll on our relationship.
Tip downgraded to 1000 INR.
Bikaner is a desert town, so most tourists come here to leave on a camel safari. I however, was already aware of the ball-crushing (well, not personally) and bodily pain (yes, personally) that follows only half a day on a camel so we opted just to see the sights of the desert out-post, investigate the town and go to the camel research center instead.
Bikaner has a really strange feeling, it is typically dirty, busy, polluted and filled with people and stray dogs like most Indian towns, but it has a really ominous feeling about it too, at least that's what I felt. The town seemed part forgotten, part behind the times, but also a bit like the government is going to start turning off the power soon, sending people away and use the land for missile research or something.
The camel research center turned out to be a bit of a let down (basically because we didn't get to feed baby camels like it said in the brochure and camel dairy products didn't exactly entice me in for a lassi) but most of all it was a let down because Mr Yunus Khan started to get real, cornering us in the car and demanding 300INR a day for his services, telling us we had paid for the car and not the driver. He proceeded to spin a woeful yarn about how married life is very difficult for him as he is unloved and has to pay for his children - something we wouldn't understand because we don't have children, apparently. I found this particularly annoying and ungrateful because we had been really good to him, only using the car for a few hours a day, letting him off early and the fact he is on a salary from the hotel and spends most of his day waiting for tourists in a car is a whole lot better than most people in India have it.
45 minutes later he was pushing it for 500 INR.
Khan also put Tom in a bad mood for the following days where he started getting really cranky even asking me if "we needed to have a round table discussion" about where I wanted to go for lunch and demonstrating the angry face he would show Khan if he asked for any more money. Anyone who knows Tom would find this hilarious because it is so completely out of character and suffice to say, he apologized almost 2 seconds after the lunch comment.
Another downer of Bikaner was the fact our bed had bed bugs (which I always thought were microscopic, I thought wrong! They look like mini blood thirsty leeches! *insert girl scream here*) but, we did meet some pretty cool people at our guesthouse which lessened the itch.
We have been in Ajmer for the past couple of days which has been quite different to anywhere else we have been.There is not a whole lot to see here (unless a toxic green coloured lake is your interest) but the people, despite speaking very little English, have been so nice and helpful.In fact, we just finished a 15 minute game of charades with 6 men and rickshaw driver (and a bull looking on) regarding our hotel.
"Ohhh Hotel hav-el-ii not hav-ar-li," they laughed in unison when they finally realized what we were talking about.
Stupid Australians.
We also bought two pairs of strange sunglasses from a cranky old man today.They are pretty amazing, clearly circa 1950's and I think one pair has a mild prescription lens but at great price ($3AUD) we both feel like we've just left press conference with Bob Dylan when we step onto the street.
Another interesting thing to note is that Ghandi stayed at the guesthouse we are staying at tonight. I think that is something pretty special and our room is quite basic which makes me think of him wandering around one of the rooms not minding it's simplicity at all.
We are off to Pushkar tomorrow to stay in what is Lonely Planets hotel pick over Christmas, so we are both looking forward to it.
Then we head to Mumbai by train have just booked flights to Goa.
So, here's to some fun times ahead as the last week has been a bit of a downer.
Have a great Christmas and please look after yourselves on the roads and on the turps over the break.
All my love,
Alex.
Ps. Please enjoy all the summer stone fruit and pavlova for me!
Xx
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