Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Day 24: Agra

“I need a camera to my eye,
To my eye, reminding,

Which lies that I’ve been hiding,

Which echoes belong…”

-Wilco, “Kamera”

Locations: Agra, Fatehpur Sikri (Uttar Pradesh)

Photos:
Agra: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050739&l=412f9&id=1101094
Fatehpur Sikri: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050740&l=e79dc&id=1101094

Temperature: 97

Morale: 7

Spinning: Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Band of Horses – Everything All the Time, We Are Scientists – With Love and Squalor

Reading: Lonely Planet, Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Talking: To my new friend Sam, who gets paid to travel and take photographs. I envy him.

What's next (I think): Delhi; Mumbai (Karnataka)

-------------------------------------------

I awoke in Hotel Kamal with my eyes sealed shut and stumbled to the bathroom sink in search of water. I turned the handle and… nothing. Not good. My eyes were sealed shut and I hadn’t any water with which to wash my face and get them open. I felt my way out of my room and into the courtyard, hoping to run into someone who could help me, but nothing was stirring—it was, after all, 5:30 in the morning. The Taj Mahal opens early, ok?

I went back into my room and, seeing no other option, pried my eyelids apart. This did not feel very good at all, and even when I was done I had pieces of gunk stuck to the sides of my eyes and my eyelashes. Finally able to see where I was going, I walked to the hotel’s reception counter and banged on the table. A man came to the desk and asked, “Can I help you?” “Yes,” I said, “the running water isn’t working. Does it need to be turned on?” “Ah, yes,” he said. We’ll turn it on now. It should be working in 30 minutes.”

Thirty minutes? The Taj Mahal opened in fifteen, and I’d be damned if I was going to miss being one of the first ones in. So I scrapped the idea of washing my face (not to mention taking a shower) and made for the West Gate of the Taj Mahal.

As planned, I was one of the first people to arrive that morning. I bought my ticket, and noticed that admission was Rs 20 for Indians and Rs 750 for foreigners. That bothered me, at first, but then I remembered that income per capita in the US is 60 times what it is in India, so by that measure my ticket should have been Rs 1200. I guess I can’t really complain.

The Taj did not disappoint. Watching the sun rise over the white marble mausoleum is not something I’ll soon forget. But I’ll stop here with the description and let you check out the photos.

While walking around the Taj grounds I met a Brit named Sam who was traveling and taking photos for a company that hosted an online bank of images. He had just spent a year in Thailand, taking photos, and now he was set for a few months in India. I expressed extreme jealousy of his job, and he admitted that it was a pretty sweet deal.

I left the Taj and walked back toward my hotel, eager to wash my face and eat breakfast, but I ran into Sam and a German girl named Heda who were heading to Agra Fort. Never one to refuse travel companions, I jumped in the rickshaw with them and we headed a few kilometers up the Yamuna River to Agra Fort.

Before entering the fort we stopped by Agra Train Station to buy our onward tickets: me for that night, and Sam and Heda for the following morning. At this point Heda realized she was out of cash, and asked Sam if she could borrow some. He agreed, and we bought tickets and walked toward Agra Fort.

But Heda was apparently very uncomfortable without cash in her pocket, and she convinced us to go in search of an ATM before entering the fort. We asked for directions multiple times and kept getting pointed in the same direction, but before long we had walked 3km and had seen no sign of a cash machine. Finally we reached a bank, and Heda went inside to get cash… but the ATM was out of order. Fitting.

We walked back to Agra Fort, but just as we got there Heda decided she didn’t feel like going in after all. What? So why did you just make us walk 6km with you? Sam growled at his choice of roommates. Fortunately for him, they would be parting ways in the morning. Unfortunately for her, she had three more weeks of solo travel ahead of her, and I predicted India eating her alive within a few days on her own.

Agra Fort was beautiful. I’d heard it was the same as the Red Fort in Delhi, but I liked this one much better and was glad I came. While in the fort, Sam gave me some pointers on adjusting the white balance, shutter speed, and exposure on my camera. I’ve been practicing ever since, and I think my photography has improved.

Sam and I left the fort and headed back to Taj Ganj (the part of town right next to the Taj Mahal, where our guesthouses were) for lunch. We had some great Indian food at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Taj Mahal, and Sam gave me suggestions for places to go in Southeast Asia, and especially in Thailand. It wasn’t until today that it fully hit me that the Southeast Asia portion of my trip was coming up soon. I’d be in Singapore 48 hours from now.

After lunch we attempted to find a cab to take us to Fatehpur Sikri, which is a ruined city 40km from Agra where the Mughal Empire was once headquartered. But we couldn’t find a taxi, so we bargained with a rickshaw driver to take us there. Sure, it would be a slow journey, but we weren’t in any hurry.

Fatehpur Sikri was built in the 1500s, during the reign of Emperor Akbar. Now referred to as “Akbar’s folly,” the city was abandoned after only fourteen years of use because of a chronic water shortage problem. The capital was moved first to Agra, and then later to Delhi (by Shah Jahan).

Though it seems a pity that Akbar built such a grand city in an area with no water, Sam and I greatly enjoyed hiking around the ghost city and trying to determine what purpose the various buildings serve. The one thing we did not enjoy was the hassle—it was worse here than anywhere I’d been since Pushkar. It got so bad that at one point I was trying to take pictures but I couldn’t because touts would grab my arms every time I put the camera to my eye.

We caught our rickshaw home, exchanged email addresses, and parted ways. I went to the train station to catch my Shatabdi Express to Delhi (oh how I’ve missed you, Shatabdi Express), but when I arrived the power in the entire station was out. It remained out for nearly twenty minutes, until just before my train arrived. Stepping onto the train was like entering another world—suddenly it became unfeasible that I had just been in a station that couldn’t keep the lights on. The air-conditioned cars of the train breathed comfort, and within minutes I was being served a full dinner. The contrast between the luxurious and the basic (and, in turn, between the haves and the have-nots) really is stark in India. Although luxury is often cheap, it is never free. In India, no one is given anything for free.

I arrived in Delhi for the third time this trip and breathed a sigh of relief—this place was starting to feel like home. And as I walked down the crowded, filthy streets of Paharganj, I realized that I was going to miss this place. It sounds ridiculous, but I had finally gotten used to the obnoxious blur that is India. I was almost sorry to be leaving it all.

I checked into Ajay’s Guesthouse (my third guesthouse in as many visits) and spent the rest of the night in an internet café, backing up photos and preparing for the next leg of my journey.

Days 22-23: Jaipur

“I’d swim across Lake Michigan,
I’d sell my shoes…”
-Sufjan Stevens, “To Be Alone With You”

Locations: Jaipur (Rajasthan)

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050690&l=2300b&id=1101094

Temperature: 98

Morale: 5

Spinning: Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans, The Strokes – Is This It?, Led Zeppelin – II

Reading: Lonely Planet, Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Talking: To a crowd of Europeans on my hotel’s roof deck; to anyone else who was willing to help me with my eye problem.

What's next (I think): Agra (Uttar Pradesh)

-------------------------------------------

I arrived in Jaipur with my eyes stinging and red, and I was in no mood to deal with touts. But as I walked toward the train station exit, a few different guys approached me, babbling things like “cheap rickshaw” and “very nice guesthouse”—I did my best to ignore them. But then they began pulling at my arms, and that’s all it took to send me over the edge: “Stop—NOW!” A few of them backed off, but the more incessant ones kept at it, attempting to guide me toward their mode of transportation.

So I pulled out my secret weapon: my eyes. I took off my sunglasses and stared right at the touts, and they backed off in a hurry. From what I hear, pink eye is quite a problem in India (is anyone surprised?), so these guys most likely knew what they were up against and figured they had better leave me alone.

I made it as far as the prepaid rickshaw booth in the parking lot of the train station before I was hassled again. But this time the offending tout was quite well-spoken, and so I decided to try to explain.

“Hey man, my eyes are really screwed up right now, and I can hardly see because I’m wearing these sunglasses instead of my regular glasses, and I really just want to be left alone so I can buy a prepaid rickshaw ticket, ok?”

The guy was surprisingly receptive. “Ok, ok, but you take my rickshaw after you buy ticket?”

That was the most reasonable request I’d heard all day. “Sure.”

He drove me to my guesthouse of choice, Hotel Pearl Palace, which had come highly recommended by the French girls I met in Bundi. I figure if two French girls found the place clean and acceptable, I would too. And given the condition of my eyes, clean was my number one consideration.

The French girls did not fail me: Hotel Pearl Palace was easily the cleanest place I’d seen in India. And the first thing I noticed upon arriving at the reception counter was a sign posted by the hotel’s owner, Mr. Singh: “Dear Staff: If we keep our guests happy, they will keep up in business.” Sure, it doesn’t sound like managerial genius, but this sort of customer focus is rarely seen in budget hotels in India. With any luck, Mr. Singh will go far.

In square foot per rupee terms, my room at Pearl Palace was the worst of the trip. My closet of a bedroom could hold little more than the double bed that resided inside it, and I had to walk down a flight of stairs to get to the communal bathroom. But it didn’t matter. Everything was spotless. I was even given a bar of soap, a packet of shampoo, and a roll of toilet paper upon check in. For Rs 250, that’s unheard of.

I dropped my pack and immediately walked down to the main road to try to find a pharmacy. Providentially, the first building I came to had a large red cross painted above the door. I walked inside and attempted to ask for Cipro eye drops (the same kind that I had used on the train), but the woman behind the counter couldn’t speak a lick of English. I fumbled for my Hindi glossary but then remembered that the Indian family I had talked with on the train had given me the name of the drug in Hindi. I passed the sheet of paper across the counter and within minutes I was on my way with a fresh bottle of eye drops. Apparently, there’s no such thing as needing a prescription in India.

At this point my eyes still stung mightily every second they were exposed to sunlight, so I knew I wouldn’t be touring around the city today. So I jumped in a rickshaw and headed to an internet café to kill some time.

My rickshaw driver, who happened to be named Lucky, spoke excellent English and was aggressively friendly, and before long I found myself having to explain why I didn’t need him to drive me around to see the sites of Jaipur for the rest of the day. But Lucky persisted, and handed me an old notebook that was full of notes from former customers, all raving about his honesty and helpfulness. Seeing as I would only have one day to see all the sites of Jaipur, I decided hiring a rickshaw driver to take me from place to place wouldn’t be such a bad idea. So we negotiated a price of Rs 400 for the day, and Lucky promised to be waiting outside my hotel the following morning. I just hoped that my eyes would be in good enough shape by then to deal with the sunlight.

I spent the afternoon in the internet café and received many a strange look for wearing my sunglasses indoors and sitting about two inches away from the computer screen. Before heading back to the hotel I stopped by the bus station to buy a ticket to Agra for the following evening. By this time, I knew what I was doing when it came to Indian buses: I walked up to the ticket window said, “Can I please have a ticket for the most expensive bus to Agra?”

Back at the hotel, I took a nap to give my eyes a rest and then spent much of the rest of the afternoon and evening on the hotel’s roof deck. At least there I could wear my sunglasses without getting strange looks.

I met a host of Europeans while on the roof deck. I spent the most time talking with a pair of German twins who were traveling around the world for a year and finishing up their trip in the US. I asked them how they planned to get around in America, and they looked each other as if to say, “Hmm, we hadn’t thought about that yet.” Then they said, as confidently as possible, “Bus.” You’re going to try to see the United States, one of the most sprawling countries in the world, by Greyhound Bus? Good luck with all that.

I also met a guy from Texel, Holland (he was shocked when I told him I’d been to Texel, and asked me some questions about the place to make sure I wasn’t lying or confused), as well as a Japanese couple who made jewelry in Japan but traveled to India once a year to buy precious stones. Apparently, Jaipur is quite famous for its precious gems business, and especially its stone-carving.

I went to bed soon after dinner, hoping for good eyes in the morning. But upon waking up at first light, I found that the pain was only slightly diminished. My eyes were considerably less red, though, and the blister-like object that had been on my left eye had grown smaller in size, so I decided to try to see Jaipur with Lucky.

Lucky took me around to all the major sites in Jaipur—first the strange Jantar Mantar, an observatory built in the 1700s that allowed the rulers of Jaipur to chart the heavenly bodies’ movement through the sky; then the City Palace, which holds the two largest silver jugs in the world, among other things; then the Hawa Mahal, a pink palace which is the most familiar site in Jaipur but which was covered in scaffolding when I visited; then the Iswari Minar Swarga Sal, a minaret that gave sweeping views of the city and the surrounding hills; and finally Amber, a town 11km north of Jaipur that hosts a beautiful fort that far outshines anything in Jaipur proper. I spent most of my time wandering around the fort at Amber—the highlight was attempting to find my way through the labyrinthine zanana (women’s quarters), which housed the maharaja’s concubines. How the maharaja managed to find his way through those passageways at night I know not.

I met a few fellow travelers along the way—two Czech girls who were on a month-long holiday and who had followed much the same path through India as I had, and an Israeli guy who, predictably, sported a ponytail and a conversation-full of clichés. There was one common theme in my conversations with these travelers: “Wow, I didn’t know Americans backpacked!”

As we headed down the hill from Amber, we passed a line of elephants ambling down the road. Seeing that I was fascinated, Lucky asked if I would like to see the elephants’ lodgings. We arrived at the elephant sheds (which were in quite poor condition, I might add) and I got to pet the elephants for a while. Shockingly, before we entered the sheds Lucky had told me that I would be asked for a tip to view the elephants, but that I didn’t have to pay anything if I didn’t want to. Wow. A truly honest rickshaw driver. What a rarity. I tipped the elephant keepers Rs 50.

Before heading back to the hotel to pick up my pack, I asked Lucky to drive me past Raj Mandir Cinema so I could get a glimpse of perhaps the most famous movie theater in India. I was disappointed that I didn’t have time to catch a Bollywood film before heading to Agra, but judging by the line of people in front of the theater I wouldn’t have gotten a ticket anyway.

I stopped by the hotel, grabbed my pack, and say goodbye to Mr. Singh, who gave me the names of the two best guesthouses in Agra. Based on how pleasant the Pearl Palace had been, I decided to take his recommendations, and I called them both from the bus station. Of course, they were both full. Apparently a tour group from Poland had booked every last room in both hotels. Awesome.

So upon my arrival in Agra, I took a rickshaw to my third choice: Hotel Kamal. The place didn’t seem particularly nice, but I figured that I could at least learn to trade the FN 5.5 Fly during my stay.

My room was an oven, but by this point in the trip I had the antidote: I took a cold shower and went right to sleep.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Days 20-21: Jaisalmer

“And the question is, was I more alive then than I am now?
I happily have to disagree

I laugh more often now

I cry more often now

I am more me...”

-Peter Bjorn and John, “Objects of My Affection”

Locations: Jaisalmer (Rajasthan)

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050686&l=dcc87&id=1101094

Temperature: 98

Morale: 4

Spinning: Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block, Sufjan Stevens - Illinois, TV on the Radio - Return to Cooke Mountain

Reading: Lonely Planet, Are You Experienced? by William Sutcliffe, Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Talking: Hardly at all to the touts—silence was my strategy of choice in Jaisalmer; to some Indian soldiers and a middle class Indian family on the train to Jaipur.

What's next (I think): Jaipur (Rajasthan)

-------------------------------------------

I really like these lines, which are taken from a song by a Swedish band called Peter Bjorn and John, and while listening to them I was thinking about how my last few emails have sounded somewhat dire. But you should know that I was, after all, expecting all the hassles, lies, and everything else that I've gotten here—and in the end, that's what backpacking in the developing world is all about. It's not supposed to be easy. But despite all the frustrations and annoyances, my underlying feeling is that I still love it, and I wouldn't trade my time here for anything. Just wasn't sure if that part was coming through in all these emails.

-------------------------------------------

My overnight train arrived in Jaisalmer at 6:30am, which was an hour late. As I’m quickly realizing, even trains that leave on time do not arrive on time. But why should trains be late? There's no traffic, right? Ah, but as one person pointed out to me today, there are cows. That could actually be quite a problem, especially at night.

On the platform in Jodhpur, I had spoken with a guy who was trying to enlist people to stay at his hotel in Jaisalmer, and, seeing as I had no idea where I was going to stay, I actually listened to him. He said he had really low prices and a great place (two things that never, ever exist in unison, and I wasn't about to believe that this was the lone exception), but more importantly, that he would have someone pick me up at the train station and take me to the hotel, and if I didn't like the place I could just walk to another guest house but wouldn't have to pay anything for the ride from the train station. I like free options, so I said ok.

Sure enough, the guy from the hotel found me—just walked up to me and said, “You are Robert Huber?” I guess there weren't many other single white guys getting off the train that morning. We drove from the train station to the old city in his jeep. At this point it was almost 7:00, and I knew that the Roddick/Federer match had to be starting soon, so when I got to the hotel I told the owner that the only way I was staying was if they had a room with a satellite TV that had the US Open. He said sure, sure, no problem (and just then a big rat ran by his foot—nice), and took me to a room with a TV. I turned the TV on, and all I saw was fuzz.

“No, no, this isn't going to work, this TV isn't working.”

“Oh, cable is out in whole city, will be back on in a few minutes probably.”

Hmm, what to do. Believing anything that anyone who wanted my money said had not been a good plan at any point during my trip so far, so I was tempted to leave, but then again the power does go out here a lot, so it was credible that the cable could go out too. Plus, this hotel was going to let me check in at 7am without paying anything extra, which might not be true for other hotels in town. I decided to wait a few minutes.

By 7:30 the TV still was not working, and I was getting impatient. “Ok, I think I might go see if I can find a TV somewhere else,” I told the owner. “Just wait until 8am, that's when the cable office opens and I can call them to see what's wrong,” he said.

Wait, you need to call the cable office to see what's wrong? I thought you already knew that it was a city-wide outage? Liar. I left immediately.

Only one place in the Lonely was listed as having satellite TV, so I went there. Incidentally, the place also had a swimming pool, which was a nice bonus.

The place was called Hotel Golden City (Jaisalmer is known as the Golden City because everything is made of golden-brown sandstone), and when I got there I asked for a room with a TV, the owner and I turned the TV on, and the first image that popped up was Venus Williams hitting a serve. Nice!

The room cost Rs 300, which was on the expensive side of what I'd been paying, but in addition to the TV the room opened up onto the pool deck, so I could walk out my door and right into the pool. In fact, I watched most of the Roddick/Federer match from the pool—just turned the TV to face out the door. It was great. Anyhow, I took the room.

I took a shower, caught the end of the Venus match, and then went for a swim while Roddick and Federer warmed up. The pool felt amazing—I think this was the first time that my entire body had been cool since Dharamsala.

I watched from the pool as Roddick played good tennis and still get spanked. There's no point in watching men's tennis anymore—Federer is just too good. Anyhow, I actually missed the end of the first set and the first set tiebreak because the cable legitimately went out city-wide. Who knows, maybe it had been out city-wide before, while I was at the other hotel, and had come on just as I was walking to Hotel Golden City. Unlikely. But the cable came back on in 45 minutes or so, and in the intervening time I chatted with an Israeli couple who had come down for a swim.

As you can probably tell from my previous emails, I have not been overly excited about the vast majority of Israeli travelers whom I have met in India. For the most part, I find them to be aggravatingly cheap (though Nimmy gave me a good explanation for this, which involves most of the kids having just finished the military and having little money and having to make what little they do have last for an entire year of traveling—if that's it, fair enough), totally self-righteous (they think they are experts on India, for sure, but also on pretty much every other country you mention, even if you've been there and they haven't), and so backpacker-clichéd that it makes me wince (talking about “finding yourself” and all this other nonsense—please, I have no problem with coming to India to find yourself, but isn't the whole point to keep it to yourself? I couldn't give two shits about the spiritual awakening you had after meeting the Dalai Lama).

The interesting thing is, in general I find I get along quite well with Israelis. I mean, I loved Israel and everyone I met there (Adam and I even said we thought living in Tel Aviv one day would be paradise), and I've always clicked with the Israelis I've known in the states—always found them to be legitimately interesting people, which is rare, and I've also found them to be quite hard-nosed and resourceful, qualities which I obviously respect. So what was the problem with these Israelis that I kept meeting all over India?

I think it has to do with two things. One is age. These kids are mostly something like 19, having just finished the military and moving on to university next. And I don't think your average 19 year old is all that mature (although a 19 year old Israeli is likely more mature than a 19 year old American). So maybe that's one reason I've been annoyed by all the backpacker clichés and pseudo-intellectual comments—that's not really abnormal coming from a bunch of 19 year olds.

The second thing has to do with India specifically. Israeli kids don't all visit India after the IDF—some go to South America, some go to Southeast Asia, and some probably go to Europe and America, though I think that's less common. So I'm seeing a subset of Israelis—the ones who chose to come to India, and specifically northern India, which, between Rishikesh (the yoga capital of the world), Dharamsala (Dalai Lama), a multitude of ashrams (Hindu spiritual retreats), and a wealth of available drugs (mostly pot and mushrooms), is an obvious place to explore the spiritual realm. So, I think, the Israelis that I've run into are predisposed to wanting to “find themselves” spiritually. Which explains a lot.

Anyhow, talking to these Israelis in the pool was a relief, because they were not the usual Israeli-in-India type. First of all, they weren't 19, but 35, which is a good start for avoiding pseudo-intellectualism, and secondly they were the tough, perceptive, somewhat cynical kind of Israelis that I already respected from my experiences in Israel and the US. We talked a lot about traveling around India, and specifically about all the hassles and lies.

The woman made some really insightful, if a little bit racist, comments about both Indian and Arab culture. First of all, she said that traveling in India is not so much different from traveling in an Arab country—you get the same annoying touts that won't leave you alone and don't respect personal space, you get the same bunch of people who try to cheat as much money out of you as they can, and you get the same unflinching lies from just about everyone you meet who has a vested interest in getting you to believe something. As the guy chimed in, “In India, and in Arab countries like Egypt, people don't think twice about lying—if it will get the deal done, then, no problem, they just lie.” A bit harsh, but I can't say I have many data points that don't support this viewpoint.

The woman went on to say that she felt a little more prepared than most travelers to visit a place like India, because she lived amongst “those people” all the time. By which she meant Arabs, which, per the above paragraph, she saw as not all that different from Indians. She admitted that her comments were a little bit racist, but in her experience she had just never been given a good reason to trust Arabs, and so she didn't trust them. She's right, that's a little bit racist, but I must admit that Adam, Ian and I had many of the same sentiments while traveling around the Middle East. I'm not creating events out of thin air here—it's really as simple as, in Egypt I got lied to about 50 times a day, and in Israel nobody lied to me. So what am I supposed to think?

In that same vein, the couple told me that this particular hotel owner, at the Golden City, was particularly slimy. He had evicted some of their friends from the hotel (in the middle of the night!) after they chose to book a camel safari through someone else. Yikes.

I think it was right then that I decided to be a lot less nice during my last week in India. If people are going to lie to me, I'm going to lie right back. If they're going to make rude comments at me from the side of the road (I finally know how women feel when they are cat-called by construction workers), I'm going to make rude comments right back. In general I don't believe in “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” but frankly I'm tired of turning the other cheek. I can be a fantastic liar if I want to be, and I can be pretty insulting, too. Watch out, Indians. It's time for Hammurabi's Code.

Based on what the Israelis had told me concerning the camel safari business, I decided that my first lie would be to keep my hotel completely in the dark about my safari plans. You see, hotels in Jaisalmer make some money off renting rooms, but they make far more money from booking camel safaris. Only, the Great Thar Desert is not supposed to be that exciting—there are a few dune seas, but most of the terrain is just barren scrub. Seeing as I had already seen the Sahara from both sides (as well as the Peruvian desert, which also seems better than the Thar), I decided I would pass on the camel safari. But once my hotel owner knew that I wouldn't be booking a camel safari through him, my life would most likely get a lot more difficult. So far they were treating me like a king, so I decided to lie to them until the moment I checked out.

“You book camel safari today?”

“I'm still waiting to hear from my friends in Jaipur about meeting up—so I don't know yet whether I'll have time for the five day trek or maybe just the four day one.”

His greedy eyes lit up—the four and five day safaris are by far the most profitable.

“But I should know by tomorrow, so I'll book then.”

He bought every word.

My Israeli friends headed back up to their room, but not before saying that I was most welcome to visit Israel again, and if I did visit I should look them up. I don't know why it feels good to hear that—it's not like you need resident's permission to visit a country—but it does.

I watched the rest of the Roddick spanking, swam in the pool a bit more (did I mention the pool felt glorious?), and then got dressed and went down to the train reservation office to see about getting a train to Jaipur for the following night.

To buy a train ticket in India, you have to first fill out a little reservation form, but you have to wait in the main line to get said reservation form, and then you have to get out of line to fill it out, and then get back in line and wait again before you can buy your ticket. Indian efficiency is really amazing. Oh, and by “line,” I really mean “mob,” which you will remain at the back of for all eternity unless you push and shove and jockey for position like everyone else. Folks, really, I don't mean to be a Western imperialist here, but isn’t it more efficient (and much more pleasant) if everyone just waits in an orderly line?

I got the ticket, and the train was scheduled to leave at 4pm the next day, which meant I would see Jaisalmer today, check out of my hotel the following morning, and then kill time in an internet café until my train. I'd probably have to keep my pack with me once I checked out, because I don't think my hotel will be jumping up and down to store it for me once they realize the camel safari isn't happening.

I stopped by my hotel to splash some cold water on my face, and then I walked up to Jaisalmer Fort, which is really quite remarkable. The fort was built in 1156, and is huge—it has 99 bastions (lookout towers) around its walls, and 25% of the population of Jaisalmer (so, that's 15,000 people) still lives inside it. The problem is that the fort is sinking, mostly because of water seeping into its foundation. It wasn't built to support anywhere near the number of people who now live inside it, and additionally all the tourist restaurants and guest houses make the situation much worse because they use ungodly amounts of water (and fill the sewage pipes, which are already over capacity, with even more liquids). Lonely Planet advises travelers to “make the ethical choice” and stay outside the fort, but of the ten tourists on my train from Jodhpur, I was the only one who didn't stay in the fort. I guess travelers are unwilling to consult “The Tourist Bible” on ethical matters. How ironic.

Anyway, the fort is impressive. I first visited a group of seven Jain Temples (Jainism is a religion that, like Buddhism, rejected the caste system and rituals of Hinduism, only Jainism never spread outside India as Buddhism did—for more info, click this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism), which were beautiful, intricately carved structures with fascinating statues and idols inside.

I then walked to the palace complex, which, taking a cue from the Meherangarh in Jodhpur, cost Rs 250 but included an audio tour. Once again the audio tour was fantastic, and included more Rajasthani history and less information about the fort itself than the tour in Jodhpur. It seems that what is now Rajasthan was once a collection of 22 independent, princely states, all with their own ability to tax and spend. In 1947, when India became independent, the states of Rajputana, as the area was then called, elected to join India as the state of Rajasthan (which means Land of Kings).

There's a lot more, but I won't bore you. After leaving the palace I headed out of the fort toward an old haveli that stood just outside the fort walls. On the way, I stopped for lunch at an Indian restaurant with a roof terrace that overlooked the fort. The food, as always, was great, as was the view.

I haven't been describing what my walks from place to place, both within the fort and outside it, were like: in a word, they were awful. The touts here are worse than ever. But I’ve realized that there is a simple rule that can explain and even predict this behavior: the more “touristy” a place is, the worse the touts are.

That’s obvious, you say. But wait: my definition of “touristy” has nothing to do with the number of tourists in a place; instead, it's all about the percentage of the city's annual GDP that is attributable to tourism, because that is the percentage of the population that you will want to murder if you stay in the city for more than two hours.

But seriously, that's really what matters. In Jaisalmer, for instance, there are two main job providers—tourism, and a military base. There isn't any other legitimate industry here. In high season there are boatloads of tourists, but in low season there aren't, and there aren't other jobs in town that people can get during low season, so that leaves a whole bunch of touts with nothing to do. And so they choose to spend their free time annoying me.

Anyway, I struggled past the touts and made it to the haveli, which was built by five wealthy Jain brothers. The place was huge, and the carvings on the outside were incredibly detailed. Inside was less exciting, except for the spectacular view of the fort from the roof.

At this point I was exhausted, and all I wanted to do was go back to my hotel and spend the rest of the afternoon in the swimming pool.

But upon entering said swimming pool, I found a floating piece of feces. I'm not sure if it was human feces, or animal feces, or maybe baby diaper feces, but in the end I didn't really care. Wherever it came from, I would never be getting in that pool again. Having worked at a pool for three summers, I know the effort involved in “shocking” a pool with chlorine following a feces incident, and I was 99% sure that this hotel owner would not ever consider expending that sort of effort on this. So, the fun was over.

I showered off, and then I showered again, and then I headed out to find an internet cafe. I found one, but the connection was 115 Kbps. Surely I could do better than that.

The next place had a 28.8 Kbps modem. 28.8? Dear lord. I haven't talked in units that small since the Stone Age. What's next, 14.4?

The next place had a 56K, and the next had a 56K that consistently connected at 33K. Finally, I was willing to believe that all of Jaisalmer was dial up. I found another place with 115k (by now I was inside the fort walls), and planted myself.

The power went out 15 minutes later, and stayed off for the next 15 minutes, at which point I decided to go have dinner. I was feeling a bit tired of Indian, so I went to a place called Little Italy and got a pizza. It was surprisingly tasty.

By this time the power had come back on, but I was too tired to hike back up the hill to the internet café, so I walked back to my hotel and went to bed.

The next morning when I woke up my eyes were fire-red and were expelling an abnormal amount of goop. Worried I might have pink eye, I didn’t put in my contacts and hoped for the best. But given that I’d been taking my contacts in and out for with less-than-clean hands for over three weeks now, I guess it really shouldn’t surprise me that my eyes had finally protested.

I watched some more US Open and then showered and went to the front desk to check out. The hotel owner and his cronies pitched a fit. Why you leave so soon? No camel safari? You should go on camel safari! Then they spoke amongst themselves in Hindi, which I find to be quite rude given that they were obviously talking about me and how I had lied my way out of being constantly harassed to book a camel safari. But what were they going to do now? I offered them the money for the room, and all they could do was take it and shut up.

I walked out of the hotel with my backpack on my back and a sense of victory in my heart. It's quite sad, I must admit, when I feel it's a victory to 1) stay at a hotel, 2) pay the asking price, 3) check out without problem, and 4) never have to buy anything additional to keep from getting kicked out of the hotel. But still, it was a victory, and just from looking at the hotel guys' faces I could tell that they knew they'd been beat at their own game.

I went back to the internet cafe in the fort that I had used last night, and within 20 minutes of sitting down the power had gone out again. This time, it stayed out for four hours. Apparently this is a normal occurrence in Jaisalmer.

While I waited for the power to come back on I purchased some books from a shop down the street. They're all paperback, so they shouldn’t add too much weight to my pack. I got The Kite Runner, God of Small Things, Freakonomics, and Siddhartha (which I've read, but which I thought might be appropriate to read again considering I didn't really “get it” back in high school).

The power stayed off, and the book shop owner handed me another book, Are You Experienced? by William Sutcliffe, and told me I could read it while I waited. The book was exactly what I needed. A satire of the backpacking scene in India, it's about a first-time backpacker named Dave who goes to India with his best friend's girlfriend, Liz, because he has a big crush on her. The book is great at exposing all the hypocrisy and BS in backpacking culture, but in the end I found myself somewhere in between Dave (who knows nothing about the Third World, doesn't care to, is totally cynical and skeptical of all the backpackers who are having spiritual awakenings, and only wants to finish the trip to India to prove he can do it) and Liz (who has one of said spiritual awakenings, hugs beggars, and generally finds peace with the earth). It seriously makes you wince to hear the clichéd garbage that comes out of Liz's mouth, and in general you sympathize with Dave's position, but in the end he's also an idiot who legitimately knows nothing of life outside of London. No one in the book is totally likeable, in the end. And the book itself is no great work of literature, but it does paint an accurate portrait of India’s backpacker scene and is worth a quick read.

I didn't finish the book before the power came back on, so I asked the shop owner how much it cost, and it was Rs 120, so I bought it, which of course was the guy's goal from the beginning.

At this point it was almost 2pm, so I got a bit of writing done and then made for my 4pm train.

I caught a rickshaw to the train station, and by now my eyes were even redder and hurt whenever they were exposed to sunlight. Better still, the train was three hours delayed (and it ended up being four). And my eyes hurt too much to read. Thankfully, my iPod was fully charged.

We finally boarded the train just before 8pm, and I immediately attempted to get some sleep. I think I napped for a couple hours, but I woke up with my eyes hurting far worse than they had before. I walked the length of the car, asking if anyone spoke English, and as luck would have it the first guy who did also had pink eye, and had some Cipro eye drops with him. He gave me two, and then I sat with his family for a bit. They seemed genuinely concerned for me, and were extremely helpful (they even wrote down the name of the drug in Hindi so I could show it to a pharmacist in Jaipur).

These Indians were kind, warm, and totally willing to help me out. It was refreshing to talk with them. And afterward, I talked with some guys who were in the military and were heading home after some training. Like the Indian family I had just met, these men were warm and friendly, and they asked me what I thought of the Indians I met so far. Not one to avoid confrontation, I told them that for the most part, I couldn't stand the Indians that I had met. They nodded understandingly and said that the uneducated, lower-class Indians were “No-good liars.” It was at that point that I realized how clearly everything in India was divided by socioeconomic status (and formerly, caste). Am I really supposed to hate lower-class Indians because they lie to me and cheat me, or am I supposed to feel sorry for them because of how badly they've been oppressed, both by colonial powers and by other Indians? The “right” answer is obvious, but I can tell you that it’s very difficult to keep from harboring resentment toward people who seem to exist to make my life miserable.

Anyhow, the soldiers also gave me some whiskey and water, which I initially refused, but they insisted to the point that I thought I would offend them if I didn't drink it. So I did, and it was awful, but that's only because I hate whiskey.

I finally excused myself and went back to my bed, where I listened to my iPod and got some more sleep (my eyes were feeling a little better post-eye drops). Just before Jaipur the guy with the eye drops let me use a couple more, and then we arrived in the Jaipur train station, where I had been once before on my way from Delhi to Bundi.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Day 19: Jodhpur

“It has religious sentiment for me and if somebody goes on harassing me on this pretext I'll have no option but to commit suicide.”
-Lakshman Mishra (Government official – Bihar state)

Locations: Jodhpur (Rajasthan)

Photos:
Jodhpur: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050627&l=3403d&id=1101094

Temperature: 98

Morale: 6

Spinning: Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, The Wrens - The Meadowlands, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak

Reading: Lonely Planet

Talking: To the same Austrian girl until midday, at which point I decided we must part ways.

What's next (I think): Night train to Jaisalmer (Rajasthan).

-------------------------------------------

I didn't have any fitting quotations for my subject line from the music I listened to today, so I'm using this insane sentence from a BBC news story that I just read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6984065.stm. I’m reading along about a guy who thinks he should be able to wear his tilak (the red dot many Hindus wear on their foreheads) in the government workplace (Bihar state), and everything is normal, and then the dude says that if he keeps being harassed like this, his only alternative will be suicide. What? A little drastic, dude? How about maybe quitting your job and trying to work in, say, the private sector? Possibly a better option than suicide. Very strange.

-------------------------------------------

I left you asleep in Jodhpur, but before I proceed I’ll jump back to something that happened the previous night. Before bed, while I was waiting for my room to cool down, I drank a couple of Fantas on the roof terrace and jotted some stuff down in my journal. While I was sitting there, an Israeli girl who was also staying at the haveli approached me and asked to borrow my “Lonely” (all Israelis call “The Book” a Lonely, instead of Lonely Planet). She had been oh-so-smart and had only photocopied the pages (she thought) she needed, but now had realized that she had forgotten a couple sections, including the one on Jodhpur. But that's cool—I've been carrying this heavy book around the whole trip because I didn't know where exactly I might go, so of course I don't mind you leeching off of me in order to keep your pack light.

So I let her borrow my “Lonely,” but instead of shutting up and taking notes, she started talking about her recent trip to Tibet. I must admit, I encouraged her at first, just to see what the time commitment was like and figure out if I could possibly make it to Lhasa on the next leg of my trip. But then she started going into excruciating detail about every town of 5,000 people that she had visited from South China all the way to Tibet. The story took over half an hour. And the best part was, she said every single place was “most beautiful.” I don't know about you folks, but I was always taught that the whole idea of a superlative was that it was unique. But apparently I “must visit” every single town in South China because every one of them is ”most beautiful” and, I mustn't forget, “unmissable.” Hmmm. It’s important to learn to make distinctions in life.

Anyway, because she talked my ear off she wasn't done with the book by the time I wanted to go to bed. So she agreed to leave it outside my door, and I would get it in the morning.

The next morning when I woke up and opened the door, the “Lonely” was nowhere to be found. I asked the haveli owner if the Israeli girl was still here, but he said she had left for the fort half an hour ago. Had she left my book with the owner, perhaps? Nope. So I was without a guidebook for my whole day of sightseeing in Jodhpur. Brilliant.

Even worse, now I was fully dependent on Astrid, because she had the German “Lonely” which she could translate to English for me. But Astrid had started to get a little annoying the night before, so I was hoping to ditch her this morning. Now, that would be much harder to do.

But still I was determined to try to strike out on my own, and so I told Astrid that I was going to the train station to buy a ticket for Jaisalmer for tonight and that I would meet her at the fort “later.” But she said that we would probably have trouble finding each other at the fort (really, you think?), so she would just wait for me at the haveli while I bought my ticket. No really, she insisted. Thanks!

I went and bought my 3-tier AC (3 bunks in a row going up the wall, in an air-conditioned car) ticket to Jaisalmer, which cost Rs 611 but was well worth it (Astrid, sounding tough, said she always traveled in “Sleeper,” which has no AC and is quite a bit more crowded. Good for you, Astrid—and who do you think got more sleep?).

Begrudgingly, I met Astrid back at the haveli and we walked up to the Meherangarh (Majestic Fort), which overlooks Jodhpur from the hilltop. Jodhpur is known as the Blue City because, like Bundi, many houses are painted blue. Also like Bundi, it's unclear whether these blue houses owe more to the many Brahmin caste residents of Jodhpur, or to the fact that the blue paint keeps mosquitoes away. Either way, all the blue looks beautiful from up in the fort.

Admission to the Meherangarh was a steamy Rs 250, but that included camera privileges and a surprisingly informative audio tour. I'm usually not a fan of audio tours, but I would have paid for this one again. I learned quite a bit about the fort and the history of Jodhpur and Rajasthan, but I'm not going to write it here. If you're interested, I'm sure there's a very good Wikipedia article.

After exiting the fort, Astrid and I headed for Jaswant Thada, a white marble cenotaph (which, by the way, is a memorial to a dead person that differs from a mausoleum in that the body is buried elsewhere) that was across the ridge from the fort. The place was beautiful, although, of course, it's supposed to be nothing compared to a certain other white marble memorial that I would visit in a few days.

The strangest occurrence of the day happened at the entrance to Jaswant Thada when Astrid refused to pay for camera privileges by maintaining that she wouldn't use her camera inside the cenotaph complex. This was a five minute argument over a Rs 20 fee, and then, once inside, she used the camera anyway. Come on, this is India—you can't cheat on admission to sights. I guess she thought of it as payback for all the times she was ripped off by the touts, but still I was unimpressed.

We climbed down the hill from the cenotaph to the Clock Tower (center of the Old City) and had another lassi at the Nazi-esque place. I wish I had started drinking these things earlier in the trip, because they're quite good and, more importantly, cold.

At this point the heat of the day was upon us, and Astrid suggested we get out of the sun by hitting an internet café. This was my chance! I told her that I was going to go back to the haveli first to see if I could get my guidebook back, but that maybe I would see her at the internet café later. I of course went to a different internet café and never saw my beloved Austrian again.

Back at the haveli, the owner told me that the Israeli girl was in her room, so I moved in for the kill. I knocked, and she answered with a blank stare, so I said, “Yeah, my book?” “Oh, right, it's right in here. Did you visit the fort today? Amazing!” Probably more amazing if you had your guidebook with you, I thought.

She found the book, but hesitated before giving it back and said, “Wait, let me just make sure I've gotten all the information I need out of the Lonely....” What? No, no, I don't care if you're done or not—making off with someone's guidebook is the cardinal sin of backpacking, and you're going to give it to me now, whether you're done or not.

Happily reunited with my “Lonely,” I walked to the non-Astrid internet café, sent a few emails, and then got dinner at a Hindi-only restaurant next door. My ordering process at the restaurant consisted of me closing my eyes and pointing to the menu, but in the end everything worked out quite well. Indian food of all varieties continues to impress. Comfortably full, I walked the 1km or so to the Jodhpur train station to commence my overnight journey through the Great Thar Desert to Jaisalmer.

The train station was in rare form. Outside the station, inside the station, all over the overpass, all over every platform, and basically everywhere else you could imagine were loads of Indians sprawled out on the ground, presumably waiting for their trains to arrive. There were literally a couple thousand of them, and that left so little room on the floor that I had to tip-toe over them. Thankfully I didn’t step on anyone.

Surprisingly enough, my train was on time, and I was in a compartment with two French girls who minded their own business rather well. I went to sleep immediately, and had to be shaken awake in Jaisalmer. Score: night trains, one; night buses, negative two. But it's fortunate I didn't take sleeper class, as Astrid had suggested, because it was so full that it couldn't have been much more comfortable, or cool, than my second class train from Bundi to Chittor. And we all know how that trip went.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Day 18: Pushkar to Jodhpur

“Don't touch me, don't touch me, don't—don't touch me...”
-The Streets, “Fit But You Know It”

Locations: Pushkar, Jodhpur (Rajasthan)

Photos:
Jodhpur: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050627&l=3403d&id=1101094

Temperature: 97

Morale: 6

Spinning: The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free, The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic, Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

Reading: Lonely Planet

Talking: To this Austrian girl who seemed cool at first but who got less cool as time passed.

What's next (I think): Jodhpur for one more day, and then Jaisalmer.

-------------------------------------------

I've had to borrow these words, which were originally penned by the great Mike Skinner (of the band The Streets), multiple times in the past few days. Telling people not to touch you is an extraordinarily effective way of getting them to leave you alone, because it conveys a sense of disgust that catches them off their guard a little bit, I think. I'm becoming more aggressive with the touts as each day passes. Fighting fire with fire is really the only option here—if you want to stay sane.

-------------------------------------------

I woke up in the hell that is Pushkar around 6:30, and showered, packed, and checked out of my guest house. The owner said, “You leave so soon?” Not soon enough, man.

I walked to the bus station, found the bus to Jodhpur, and got on. The bus was in bad shape, but I knew it would be that way—there was only one bus to Jodhpur, and it was public. Amazingly, the guy at the ticket booth had told me that the bus was a heap of junk before I bought my ticket. I've learned to appreciate the rare honest Indian salesman.

Anyhow, I got on the bus, found a window seat, and planted myself in it. Once you have a window seat, you don't get up for any reason. Have to use the bathroom? Too bad. Not worth it. Hold it or do it in that empty water bottle.

After a couple minutes this Austrian girl named Astrid sat down next to me. She had been in India for a month or so, and she traveled quickly like me and spoke perfect English, so we got along well. One thing I've been really annoyed with here is the backpacker culture that looks down upon anyone who is in India for fewer than three months or who stays in one place for fewer than 4 days. I don't have three months to spend in India, but I still wanted to see some of the country, so I'm making the best of the time I have. I don't need some Israeli backpacker (the worst of the ultra-cool, ultra-pretentious, “I've been in India so long that I feel Indian” backpackers) asking me how long I'm in India and then frowning and saying, “Oh, so you don't have enough time to see very much, right?” So it was nice to meet a traveler who had the same sort of time constraints as me and who wasn't too cool for school.

Astrid had some good insights into India , and specifically into Rajasthan, that were fairly obvious but which I somehow hadn't thought much about before now. First of all, after I tried to buy a banana and was told it cost Rs 10 (a banana really costs Rs 1 or 2), she pointed out that many tourists come to India and only visit Rajasthan, and so those tourists often don't know what the right price for things (like bananas) is, so the touts jack up the price and try to screw them. And because the Rajasthani touts have no way of knowing where I have been in India, or how long I have been here, they don't know if I know the right price. So they try to screw me, and then I walk away.

Also, Astrid mentioned how bad the staring was in India, and she's right. I hadn't mentioned it before, but these people stare with no shame. You stare right back at them, and sometimes say, “Can I help you?” or even “Stop staring at me!” and they just keep on staring. No shame whatsoever. Apparently, it's not rude to stare in Indian culture, or, more likely, it is rude, but these people just don't care.

Also, Astrid mentioned that she had been grabbed a lot by Indian men. I'm not certain where all she has been grabbed, and I didn't feel like asking, but in general people here have no problem with touching you as much as they see fit. Even I have been “grabbed,” though not anywhere particularly offensive. But after having your arm pulled on about 500 times by a collection of dirty hands, you don't really care that your arm is not a “private” area—you still don't want it touched. Hence the subject line quotation, above. Don't touch me, ok? Is that so much to ask?

One more thing: everyone here begs for money (obvious) and pens (not so obvious). Why pens? Are they really hard to come by in India? I guess they must be. In any case, I would have brought a whole case of pens with me if I had known how popular they’d be. Just as long as I could hand out the pens without having to touch anyone.

After talking with Astrid for an hour or so about our respective travels, I ran out of things to say. So I spent the last few hours listening to my iPod. Oh, but I had to surrender my widow seat to Astrid, because she asked, and I felt bad saying no. But later it kind of pissed me off, because she markets herself as this tough girl who doesn't need any help and can do anything that any boy can do... so why am I supposed to give her my window seat? Chivalry or equality—your pick, but you can't have it both ways.

We reached Jodhpur , and before the bus even stopped there were twenty rickshaw drivers waiting at the bottom of the bus steps, ready to pounce. I pulled out my “Don't touch me” line as I walked down the steps, and then, in case that wasn't clear enough, I said, “If you touch me, there is no chance that I'm getting in your rickshaw.” I'm not sure if they understood—maybe they just got the gist by my tone of voice—but they didn't touch me, and they actually shut up for a few seconds too. Beautiful.

Astrid and I split a rickshaw to Singhvi's Haveli, a 4km ride for which we paid Rs 10. That is way too cheap, even for India, so I'm sure the rickshaw driver got some kind of commission from the haveli for taking us there (even though we were going there anyway). These rickshaw drivers really hold a lot of sway in the tourism industry. It's obnoxious.

There was only one open room in the haveli, and it was quite nice, but we bargained the guy down to Rs 300 and took it. It could be the best value room that I've had all trip, especially because I was splitting the cost with the Austrian.

We dropped our stuff and then headed to the clock tower, which is the center of the Old City of Jodhpur. Too tired from the hot bus ride to do anything today, we got a lassi (a tasty yogurt drink) at this restaurant next to the clock tower. Menus and ordering were nonexistent at this place—you just sat down and they (eventually) brought you the lassi. You took what you got and were happy with it, or else. Very Soup Nazi-esque. I was actually kind of impressed.

Afterwards we headed to an air-conditioned internet cafe for a few hours. I didn’t get much writing done, but the cold air felt glorious.

We met back at the haveli, showered, and walked back toward the clock tower to find a place to eat dinner. We ended up eating at a haveli with an amazing rooftop restaurant that overlooked the fort (more on that tomorrow) and the whole city. The food was great too.

On the way back to our haveli, we passed a temple to Lord Krishna that was decorated and lit up to celebrate Krishna's birth. There was a cart selling Indian ice cream, so we decided to try some—it tasted like a frozen lassi, which was fine with me. Contentedly full, we walked the rest of the way back to the haveli and went to bed.

Overall, the hassle has not been bad here so far, with the exception of the bus station. Maybe that's because Jodhpur is an actual city, where people have actual jobs outside of the tourism industry (that wasn't the case in Pushkar, which explains a lot). Anyway, so far I kind of liked this place. But the following morning I planned to check out the city's major tourist attractions, so we'll see how long my good feeling holds up.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Day 17: Pushkar

“I'm on your side when nobody is, 'cause nobody is,
Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear...”

St. Vincent, “Paris is Burning”

Locations: Pushkar (Rajasthan)

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050625&l=89579&id=1101094

Temperature: 96

Morale: 2

Spinning: St. Vincent - Marry Me (I'm now officially obsessed with this album.)

Reading: Lonely Planet

Talking: In terse, rude-as-possible soundbites to every tout who approaches me, preferably before they even open their mouths to bother me. “'Sh'—before you even start. That was a preemptive 'sh.' Just know that I have a whole bag of 'sh' with your name on it.”

What's next (I think): Jodhpur (Rajasthan)

-------------------------------------------

I think this line from St. Vincent is the perfect quotation to describe the attitude of the Rajasthani touts toward the few tourists who are here. Don't trust all those other touts, trust me, I'm on your side, so come over here, that's right, a little closer, GOT YOU!

-------------------------------------------

I left you on the way to the Udaipur bus station, where I was to catch an overnight bus to Ajmer. I made it to the bus station just fine (although the rickshaw driver complained that it was too late to get a fare back from the bus station, to which I replied that I did not care), and was taken to my bus, which was parked around the corner.

I think they parked the bus around the corner because they knew that I would go purchase enough muscle relaxants to put myself into a sleep from which I would never awake if I saw the bus prior to boarding it. This thing was a total piece of shit. For starters, the door was hanging from the side of the bus in such a way that it could not possibly close. Fine; I was sitting in the back of the bus anyway.

But where was the A/C that had been promised when I purchased my ticket? Oh, it was “A/C” in the form of open windows, which also included an all-you-can-eat special of mosquitoes and other various insects. And where were the seats that reclined fully, also promised when I bought my ticket? They didn't exist. Instead, there were regular seats, with compartments above them that were called “beds.” I was assigned one of these ”beds.”

In reality, they were not beds at all. They were disgustingly dirty, smelly, fabric-covered cushions surrounded by plastic on all sides. The dimensions of the plastic compartment were about 4ft x 2ft x 2ft, which is barely enough room to breath and not even close to long enough to lie down. Oh, but my “bed” was covered in crumbs of food, just in case I was hungry. I wasn't.

I asked if I could put my pack below the bus, seeing as there was clearly no room for it in my hot, smelly “bed” compartment. ”No.” Why not? “I don't speak English.”

So I put my pack at the bottom of my compartment, which left at least 2.5 feet for the whole of the length of my body. Brilliant.

By now I figured that I'd be better off just sitting in one of the seats for the whole trip—I'd probably manage to get more sleep that way. But all the seats were full of Indians who had paid less for their tickets than I had (after all, I had a sleeper ticket). So I climbed into my compartment, curled up into a ball, and attempted to sleep.

Somehow, I did manage to sleep for a few hours. But then, the driver must have decided to turn off the main road and start driving over a trail of rocks and logs, because I awoke to the worst jarring of the trip so far. It was so bad that my head kept slamming against the sides of the plastic compartment no matter how hard I tried to keep it steady. I should have known this was coming, as the final promise made to me while I purchased my ticket (which until now had remained unbroken) was a smooth ride. I should have known that someone promising me a “smooth ride” is much worse than saying nothing at all. Just the fact that the smoothness of the ride is on these guys' minds means that the ride must be anything but smooth. It's like a sign outside an internet cafe that says “Fast Internet.” These days, I just assume internet will be fast, but if the place has to write “Fast Internet” on a sign, you can bet it will be dirt slow.

Anyhow, I gave up on sleep and pulled my iPod out of my pack (which, thank god, was right in my compartment with me! Grrr). But the bus was bouncing so much that I couldn't get a good look at the iPod screen. So I just pushed play and took what they gave me.

Sure, the road was bad, but it was made far worse by the fact that the bus had no shocks whatsoever. By the end of the ride I seriously wanted to punch the guy who sold me the ticket and told me all those lies. But that's the beauty of his lies—he was way back in Udaipur, and there was no way I was going back there to confront him. Even if I had realized just how bad the bus was prior to departure and refused to get on, what good was that going to do? I probably wouldn't get my money back, and I wouldn't make it to Pushkar until a day later. There was basically nothing I could do except suck it up. But I certainly wouldn’t be taking any more overnight buses unless I saw the bus first. And even then, I'm not sure if I'd do it.

We got to Ajmer at 4:15am, instead of 5:30am like the guy who sold me my ticket had said. This was the second overnight bus (out of two) that had arrived over an hour early, and every other bus or train or jeep or plane I had taken in India had arrived at least half an hour late. Coincidence? I think not. I had discovered the final lie: the arrival time. No one will buy a ticket for a bus that arrives in a foreign city at 4:15am, but if you tell people it will arrive at 5:30am, you might be able to sell some tickets. Awesome.

As I was getting off the bus I met two travelers from Malta who had been on the same bus from Udaipur and who were also heading to Pushkar. They were bitching about the last bus even more than me! Anyway, we agreed to try to find the Pushkar bus together.

Even at 4:15 there were plenty of touts waiting at the bus stand. They told us that the first bus to Pushkar didn't leave until 7am, so we would have to take a rickshaw. And, what do you know, they just happened to be rickshaw drivers!

We ignored the touts as best we could and waited for the Pushkar bus to show up. It came at around 5am, and we arrived in Pushkar at 5:30. On the way to Pushkar I talked to the Maltese travelers a bit, and wow, these people were anti-everything. Talk about too cool for school. They tried to tell me not to go to the Taj Mahal because it was “way overrated.” Ok, maybe it's overrated, but even if you drop its ratings by half it's still by far the most popular tourist destination in India, and I'm going to trust the wisdom of crowds on this one. But thanks.

We got to Pushkar and the Maltese couple asked me if I wanted to check out some guest house with them, and I said no thanks. I'm cynical enough as it is.

I walked to a guest house in my guidebook, bargained to be able to check in right then (6am) without extra charge, and dropped my stuff and headed to breakfast.

A quick bit about Pushkar: it's a holy city, or, more accurately, a holy town, as its population is about 15,000. It has one of the only Brahma (one of the three main Hindu gods) temples in the world, so a lot of pilgrims come to visit the town and worship at the temple. The town is set around a holy lake, which has 52 bathing ghats around it so pilgrims can bathe in the holy water. Gandhi's ashes were sprinkled into the lake at one of the ghats, which is now called Gandhi Ghat. The town sounds really serene, right? That's what I thought when I read about it, too. Oops.

I ate breakfast at a place with a rooftop terrace that overlooked the lake. I had a banana crepe: the cornerstone of any Indian breakfast. The setting was quite nice, but during the middle of breakfast I hit a wall. Apparently the 2-3 hours of sleep I got on the bus prior to being jolted out of coherence was not quite enough. So after breakfast I headed back to the guest house and slept from 8-11:30.

I woke up feeling much better, showered, and then walked around the lake toward the Brahma Temple. On the way, I passed a bus ticket office that was selling tickets to Jodhpur for 7am tomorrow morning. I thought about buying a ticket, but figured I probably wouldn't be ready to leave by 7am tomorrow.

I reached the temple, and as I was about to enter, I was told I had to buy flowers to leave as an offering inside the temple. How much were flowers? 10 rupees. Ok, fine—I remembered reading something in my book about flowers anyway. So I walked into the temple, which was awash with Indian pilgrims, left half the flowers (my book recommended saving half the flowers for the lake, so you wouldn't be forced to buy more) in front of the statue of Brahma, and walked around the temple a bit.

A guy who couldn't have been more than 25 started talking to me as I was wandering around the temple, telling me about how he had just returned from a trip to Europe. Ok, so maybe this guy wasn't your average tout. I talked with him as we circled around the temple grounds.

As we exited the temple, he turned to me and said, “Ok, you pay me what you like.” What? Dude, we were just having a conversation—I don't know how that requires me to give you money! It would have been bad enough if he had forced a guided tour on me, but he didn't even give me a tour—he just talked about his trip to Europe! What the hell was a guy who had the cash to travel to Europe doing asking me for money anyway? I told him no dice and walked away shaking my head.

I walked down to the lake with the other half of the flowers wrapped up in a piece of newspaper in my hand. When I reached the lake (I was at the part called Brahma Ghat, which is where Brahma once bathed... wait, what am I saying, Brahma is a fictional deity...) a semi-official looking guy asked where my flowers were, and I opened up my hand to show him, and he took the flowers out of my hand and dumped them onto a separate plate of similar flowers and handed the plate to me. “What?” “Friend, you take this plate, free of charge. You pay donation, what you like.” I was ready to kill this guy. I had already paid for flowers, and he had essentially stolen them from me and mixed them in with his flowers, which I was now supposed to buy from him. And don't believe for a second that I could “pay what I liked” for this plate of flowers. Oh no—if I didn't get to the correct price, you better believe they weren't going to let it slide.

Totally exasperated, I told the guy to keep his [expletive] flowers and walked down to the bank of the “holy” lake. I sat down and pulled out my guidebook to read about the place.

“No guidebooks allowed, holy place.” What? That is ridiculous. Did Brahma once tell his followers, “Thou shalt not consult Lonely Planet while sitting on the banks of my lake”? Annoyed, I put the guidebook away.

Then the guy who had told me that I couldn't read the guidebook approached me and started giving me a history of the lake, which I think was identical to what was in the guidebook. Still annoyed, I ignored him, and then he held out his hand, expecting money for his history lesson.

This was too much. I lost it. “Oh, so no guidebooks allowed so you can charge me for a 'guided tour'? Good thinking!” This place was ridiculous.

I got up to leave, but as I did two guys ran up and asked where my flowers were and said I couldn't leave this “holy place” without leaving an offering of flowers. Well, you know what, if this place is holy then I'll be damned. Since when is a holy place one where touts suck money out of everyone who comes to visit? If this place were really holy, or, more accurately, if these assholes took its so-called holiness as seriously as they said they did, they wouldn't be trying to screw me over. These people could use a lesson from the Sikh's Golden Temple: nobody there asks you for money, because doing so would contradict the whole spirit of the place. Apparently, the Hindus in Pushkar don't feel the same way.

Whatever the reason, this place certainly did not seem very holy to me. It did seem like a big tourist trap, and one that I was ready to get out of as soon as possible. Totally disillusioned, I walked back to the bus ticket office and bought a ticket for the 7am bus to Jodhpur.

I had lunch at a place called the Raj Garden Terrace, which had, you guessed it, a nice garden terrace overlooking the lake. I had some good Indian food, and lunch was really peaceful. Truthfully, this town could be quite pleasant if it wasn't for the people down below. It's unfortunate when people ruin an otherwise beautiful place, but it's happening all over this country.

I walked back to my guest house and on the way was again harassed by a handful of touts. These guys were even more aggressive than the Udaipur touts—one rode up on his motorbike and said, “What guest house you stay in?” I just started laughing. Dude, the only way you're finding out what guest house I'm staying in is if you pry the room receipt from my cold, dead fingers.

I went back to my room and tried to take a nap, but just then the power went out. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but the power goes out multiple times a day in India, often for an hour or more, even in Delhi. Clearly, these guys have not mastered the concept of the power grid quite yet. Anyway, no power meant no fan, which meant it was far too hot to stay in my room. So I went up to the roof deck of my guest house and ordered a Fanta. When the guy brought it, he tried to convince me to order food, too. Ahhh! Just a moment's peace in my own guest house, that's all I'm asking for!

I wrote off the entire town and spent the rest of the day in an internet cafe, except for a very peaceful dinner in this garden restaurant down the street from my guest house. Once again, I though about how this place could be really nice if people could just leave me alone for five seconds.

I went to bed around 11pm. The next morning's 7am bus to Jodhpur could not come soon enough.

Day 16: Udaipur

“Us kids know...”
-The Arcade Fire, “No Cars Go”

Locations: Udaipur (Rajasthan)

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050526&l=7b62b&id=1101094

Temperature: 97

Morale: 6

Spinning: The Arcade Fire - EP, The Arcade Fire - Funeral, The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Reading: Lonely Planet

Talking: To touts: as little as possible. Which means I wasn't really talking to anyone.

What's next (I think): Overnight bus to Ajmer, then on to Pushkar.

-------------------------------------------

The Arcade Fire is a truly great band. Check out the EP if you’ve never heard it—it’s the least produced of the three albums, but sometimes that’s an asset.

-------------------------------------------

I woke up around 8am to a cool breeze coming off the lake and into my window. It felt amazing, and for once on this trip I was just the right temperature. Oh 400 rupee room, how I love thee.

I didn't shower (!), got dressed, and headed to a place called the Lake View Hotel for breakfast. It had the highest roof deck in the area, so I figured I'd get a nice view of the lake and the city.

Indeed, the view was great, as was the food (omelet and toast—why can't I figure out what Indians eat for breakfast?). But the weather turned out to be not so great. In the half hour or so that I was on the roof, the temperature increased by something like 37 degrees and, simultaneously, the humidity tripled. Want to guess the next sentence? Yup, my shirt was soaked with sweat by the end of the meal.

I finished breakfast and walked back down to the street and around the corner to Jagdish Temple, which is a Hindu temple with some nice statues—one a black stone depiction of Vishnu, and the other a brass image of Garuda (Vishnu's man-bird vehicle). It may not sound that great, but as temples go this one was pretty cool. There were something like 30 worshipers inside, and they were chanting as the priest made some weird gestures at the front of the temple. I sat there and pretended I knew what was going on.

I walked out of the temple and up the road toward the City Palace. Here's where the “tourist infrastructure but no tourists” thing comes into play. I was approached by something like 27 different touts (in this case I'm not employing hyperbole) in a stretch of 100 meters, all of them trying to get me to come into their shop (the good) or asking me what country I was from and how long I was staying in Udaipur (the bad) or asking me what guest house I was staying in or, better yet, “Where you going?” (the ugly).

That's right, “Where you going?” That's only a hair more tolerable than the Egyptian favorite “Where you go?” I never thought India could descend that far.

But not all of India, or even Rajasthan, was this bad. In Bundi, for instance, the only people who approached me were children, who came running up to me to ask my name or to ask where I was from or to ask for “ten rupees” or “one photo.” I hadn't experienced that in Srinagar or Leh or Manali or McLeod Ganj or Chandigarh (although I did experience it in Delhi a bit, and in Amritsar, but with Indian tourists who weren't from Amritsar, so that doesn't really count). But it was kids who were coming up and bugging me, so it was kind of cute. Plus, it was the first time I had had to deal with it (with the exception of the less concentrated episodes in Delhi and Amritsar), so it was more tolerable.

Most importantly, in Bundi the adults knew better. For the most part, they left you alone. That isn't the case in Udaipur. The adults are much worse than the kids. I seriously can't get a moment's peace here. I have to sneak into an alley to have a look at my guidebook—otherwise I have three Indian dudes looking over my shoulder trying to “help me.”

Anyhow, the constant hustlers continued for the whole of my time in Udaipur, and made what was a really nice city seem quite a bit worse. I'm not going to talk about them any more in this email, but that doesn't mean they didn't continue to annoy me. They did.

I walked up to the City Palace past the hoards of touts, and I bought my ticket for the boat trip that takes you past the Lake Palace Hotel and then stops off at Jagmandir Island (the other island in the lake, which also has a palace on it, though one that’s not nearly as impressive as the Lake Palace). The first boat left at 10, so I made it down to the dock just before then, and it turned out that I was the only person there. So I got my own private cruise! Nice! Although the only thing it got me was as much time as I wanted on Jagmandir Island, which turned out to be about five minutes (you couldn't actually go in the palace). In any case, “low season” for tourism in India is indeed low.

But the views of the Lake Palace were amazing. The thing is pure white and intricately detailed, and it really does look like it's floating on water. It was featured in Octopussy (Bond film), actually, which no one in the town lets you go more than five minutes without hearing about (multiple restaurants show the film every single night).

After the boat trip I headed to the City Museum, which was worthwhile because it was the first time I had seen much Indian art (although admittedly this was all done by court artists, which is a pretty small sector of Indian art). The first thing that struck me was the level of detail: most paintings featured hundreds of people, usually soldiers, and each person was depicted in excruciatingly fine detail. Those court artists must have spent months on these things.

Also, most paintings depicted battles between Rajasthani rulers (for instance, the Rajputs) and foreign armies (usually the Mughals). The paintings always made the Rajasthani side look glorious and invincible. Too bad they lost most of the battles.

After the City Museum I went to the Bagore-Ki-Haveli, which is basically an old, 138-room haveli (a traditional, ornately decorated Rajasthani home, in case you've forgotten) that has been restored to what it would have looked like back in the 18th century. In general I don't love restoration jobs, but this one was well-done. The most interesting things were 1) a manual fan that hung from the ceiling and had to be pulled (via a rope that was attached) by a servant to cool the person sitting on the other side, and 2) the world's biggest turban, which was about three feet wide and two feet high, and in a glass case. I wondered how much I'd have to pay someone to pull on a rope and fan me for the rest of the trip. Probably not much.

After the museums I headed back to my guest house and made it back just before the monsoon hit. When it rains in India, it rains.

I ate dinner that night at a place called Sunrise, where I talked with a French girl (another tourist? No way!) and the owner for most the meal. It was a leisurely, relaxing dinner, which was exactly what I needed after a morning of run-ins with touts. And I still love Indian food, although my digestive system likes it a bit less.

After dinner I headed to the bus station to catch my overnight bus to Ajmer, but I'll leave that to tomorrow's Pushkar update.