-Bloc Party, “Song for Clay (Disappear Here)”
Locations: Bundi, Chittorgarh,
Photos:
Temperature: 97
Morale: 5
Spinning: Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City, The Kills - Keep on Your Mean Side, Green Day - American Idiot, Stiff Little Fingers - Inflammable Material
Reading: Lonely Planet
Talking: To touts: sarcastically, under my breath.
What's next (I think): Another day in
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Jatinder, this is the Bloc Party line to which I was referring. Why does Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke hate
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I woke up around 8:30 on the morning after the Teej procession, checked out of my haveli, and caught an auto-rickshaw to the Bundi train station. While in the rickshaw, I realized why everyone in the town drives motorbikes instead of cars—yes, partially because motorbikes are cheaper, but also because most the roads in Bundi are not wide enough for an auto-rickshaw, let alone a car. The ride to the train station took ten minutes longer than it should have because we had to avoid all the narrow roads.
I got to the train station around 9:15, and the train to Chittorgarh was scheduled to leave at 9:30 (the road from Bundi to Chittor was awful, so the train was much faster—2.5 hours versus 5 hours by road—but the road from Chittor to Udaipur was good, so the bus was much faster for that portion—4.5 hours versus 6 hours), but it was running 30 minutes late. I figured I could still go ahead and buy a ticket, but when I went to the counter the guy in the ticket office said that he couldn't sell me a ticket until 30 minutes before the train arrived. So I asked how he knew exactly what time the train would arrive—what if it got delayed again? Would he then get in trouble for selling me a ticket at 9:30 for a train that didn't arrive until 10:15? He didn't seem to catch the humor, so I sat down on a bench and waited.
Of course at 9:30 everyone immediately rushed to the ticket window, so I had to wait in line behind about fifteen Indians who apparently had to stand at the window and ponder the meaning of life prior to purchasing a ticket. The fifteen-person line took about 25 minutes to process. Really,
As you can see, I was in already in a splendid mood that morning. But it was about to get worse.
The train arrived, but at 10:07 instead of 10:00, so the way I figure it all those people who bought tickets between 9:30 and 9:37 shouldn't be allowed on the train. Right? Grrrrr.
I didn't exactly know how long the train would stay in the station (it seems to vary from about 20 seconds to ten minutes), so I hurriedly jumped into what I thought was a second class car. You see, I had purchased a second class ticket, and that was the only option the guy at the ticket counter gave me, so I assumed that was the only option I had. Bad assumption.
The train started moving about 30 seconds later, and about three seconds after that I realized that suicide was looking like a pretty good option compared to staying in this train car for 2.5 hours. You might remember me professing my love for Indian trains a few emails ago. That was foolish. I love some Indian trains—namely the spacious, air-conditioned cars of Shatabdi trains. But I love second class Indian trains about as much as I love popped collars.
This particular second class train car was so crowded that it was really just one brown blob of people. I wasn't sure where one person ended and another one started, and I really didn't care. I just wanted out of this train car immediately, no matter what the consequences. Oh, and it was hot. So hot that “sweating” is not the correct term for what my skin started doing. I think it's more accurate to say that my skin “liquefied.”
I took a guess at where the line between two people was and put my shoulder into the crevice and pushed as hard as I could. Nobody budged. So I was left stuck in the corridor by the toilet, unable even to make it into the actual train car. In the end, it didn't matter anyway. It wasn't any cooler or less crowded in there.
So there I stood with my backpack on my back, hating life. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the first sweaty Indian dude pushed past me to get to the toilet, soaking my shirt with his sweat in the process. After he finished his business, he squeezed past me again, only this time he put his wet palm on my shoulder, as I pondered the likelihood that he had bothered to wash his hands.
Apparently this exercise must have looked like fun to all the other Indians, because one by one every single person in the train car pushed by me to use the toilet. And when the last person had gone, the first person took a second turn. I am not making this up! I literally saw the same people who had been to the toilet only 20 minutes earlier go again. It started to annoy me so much that I said to some of the people who passed by me, “Didn't you just go?” No response. Anyhow, in the end, I think everyone in the train car visited the toilet at least three times during that hour. I am still not making this up.
Several times, people didn't exactly slide by me—they did more of a “push” by me. That made me mad. The train was uncomfortable enough already without people pushing me around. So one time, I pushed back—but then I got stares from all the men around me that said, “If you do that again, we will rain blows upon you in such a way that will make you wish you were never born.” So I played it cool after that.
But at least my shirt now has an enviable collection of the bodily fluids of every single person in the train car. It will almost certainly be worth a lot of money someday.
After about 30 minutes, I started getting desperate. I had to get off this train. I was losing sanity with every minute that passed. “When is the next stop?” I asked the people whose bodies were flush against mine. No one understood.
A quick word about Indians and English: they don't speak it. I came to
There are of course exceptions to this rule. Middle class Indians speak English quite well, but travelers don't meet any middle class Indians because middle class Indians mind their own business.
Also, touts speak some English, but only the optimal amount that allows them to extract the maximum amount of money from tourists. For instance:
Me: How much does that bottle of Fanta cost?
Tout: Twenty rupees.
Me: Ok, here's a 100 rupee note. Can I please have change?
Tout: I don't speak English.
So as you can see, it was impossible for me to communicate with the Indians on the train, because they were not touts, and they certainly weren't middle class.
So I tried to look in my guidebook for the Hindi word for “next stop,” but I didn't have enough space around me to get the guidebook out of my pocket.
Finally, one guy who had previously been in what looked like a trance-like state said, “wrong class.” Seriously? Had I brought this mess upon myself? Was second class some other much more comfortable place? What a fool I was. I would simply get off at the next stop and figure out where second class really was.
The next stop, of course, turned out to be over an hour away. That was probably the longest hour of my life. Or, maybe it was the second longest hour. The longest was waiting for my HIV test results to come back. Ha ha, just kidding mom!
During that hour I thought a whole host of terrible things about these people who were pressed up against my body. I thought that maybe they deserved to be poor, given that they were coarse, rude, lazy, dishonest thieves who tried to screw me whenever possible. I thought about my reasons for giving money to some of them, and questioned whether I wasn't giving it away more to kill my guilt than for any other reason. Those lines from RENT ran through my head: “Just trying to use me to kill his guilt! It's not that kind of movie, honey—let's go.” And I thought that I had been a fool for ever feeling sorry for any of these dirty, wretched people.
In the end, I know all these thoughts are ridiculous (except for maybe the “killing my guilt” one), but, after all, this is supposed to be a journal of my thoughts, and these were my thoughts, so I'm not going to sugar-coat them. But it's lucky I'm not doing a “Political Spectrum” section of my daily trip log, because today's entry would have to be “Far Right.”
We finally made it to the next stop, and I pushed my way off the train into the desert heat that was quite a bit cooler than the train car had been. I ran down the platform, desperately showing my ticket to anyone who would look and trying to get some hint of which car I was supposed to be sitting in. Finally someone pointed to a car that said “Sleeper” on it, and though I was certain that was not the right car, the train was about to leave, so I jumped in.
The car was totally empty. I spread my legs out on one seat and put my pack on another.
But then the ticket collector came by, asked for my ticket, and (surprise, surprise) told me that my ticket wasn't good for this class. I tried to explain that someone had pointed me to this car, but he wasn't interested in my explanation, and he subsequently knocked my ticket out of my hand and onto the floor in frustration. He told me that my ticket was for second class, which was the car just behind the engine.
The car just behind the engine? Ha. I had been in the right car after all. The guy who said “wrong class” was just telling me that I should have bought a ticket for a better class. Well, he was right about that. Even though this was not an overnight train, it turns out I could have bought a ticket for sleeper class anyway, which only cost about 15 rupees more than second class. I've learned my lesson.
But I still had the issue of what to do now. The ticket collector said I had to switch back to the second class car at the next stop. “No, no, you can't make me do that. I'll do anything, just don't send me back there!”
I offered to pay the difference between the second class and sleeper class fare, but he refused and said again that I had to change at the next stop. But then, out of nowhere, he totally changed his tone and demeanor. He beckoned for me to come closer, and then whispered in my ear that because I was a guest in his country, he would let me stay in sleeper class. What the hell? Then I realized what was going on. The guy had realized that he wasn't going to get in any trouble for letting me stay in sleeper, and so he had no incentive to make me leave. On the other hand, if he allowed me to stay, he could make a friend and get me to kiss up to him for the next five minutes.
Well, kiss up I did. I listened attentively as he told me all about his well-educated family who also, it seems, excelled in every sport known to man. I heard tales of national championships in hockey (surely not ice hockey) and cricket that were supposedly won by his relatives, and I “WOW”-ed at everyone one of them. And it was worth it. I rode the last hour and a half in comparative luxury.
I got off the train in Chittor, which is a miserable, polluted little town about halfway between Bundi and
I agreed to pay Rs 20 for the ride to the bus station, and hoped to be left alone for the next two kilometers, but immediately my rickshaw driver started talking to me. “Why you go to bus station? You not stay in Chittor one night?” “NO.” “Maybe you pay me small money and I drive you around to see sights in Chitt—” “NO!” “I make quick turn here and show you....”
He turned off the main road, and I flipped my lid. “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! TAKE ME TO THE BUS STATION RIGHT NOW OR I WILL FREAK OUT! NOW! NOW!” “Ok ok ok, bus station, bus station.” As you can see, I was not in any mood for shenanigans.
I made it to the bus station without further incident and found the bus that was headed for
I bought my ticket and headed for the bus, but the beggar followed me, pulling at my pack. I had already screamed at the guy—what else was I supposed to do?
I did nothing, and he followed me onto the bus. I turned around and pushed him back, but he continued to follow me down the aisle. Finally, two Indian dudes grabbed him and literally threw him off the bus. I guess I should have been more aggressive.
But he continued to bang on the side of the bus outside my window and stick out his hand. So I slammed the window in his face.
The bus finally left, and the ride to
But this brings me to something else I've noticed about Indians, or at least about the Indians I've met: they're obsessed with money. Never before in all my travels have I been asked how much my salary was or how much I planned to spend on my trip. Here, I'm asked one of those questions every other day, at least. I guess the fact that they're obsessed with the answers to these questions means that
I got to the
That brings me to another concept I haven't talked much about thus far: service. Service in
As I was saying, service in
But back to the narrative. I got to Lal Ghat (ghat just means river or lake landing, so Lal is just the name of a certain part of the bank of Lake Pichola that happens to have a lot of guest houses and most of the city's tourist attractions) and went right to Lal Ghat guest house, which was supposed to be the best guest house in town. Needing a rest after the events of the day, I passed over the dorm room with the shared bathroom and took a room on the top floor with a private bathroom, great lake views, and, most importantly, a nice breeze coming in through the window. The room cost me Rs 400, whereas the dorm room would have cost me Rs 200. Whatever.
I showered and lay in a fetal position on the bed for a while, wondering if I should even leave the room again before dinner. But finally I called up some energy and got dressed and walked down the road from the guest house. The first shop I came to sold tickets for private, overnight buses to
I bought a ticket for the following night's bus for Rs 200, which seemed too cheap, but then again this was
A quick bit about
The city is set around a big 4km by 2km lake called
On the bank of the lake is the
Anyhow, more on
I walked around the
I went to place called
Interestingly, I was also the only person in the restaurant, which was this really romantic spot with deep blue walls, a garden, palm trees, and candlelit tables. This would become a theme in
But that's tomorrow's business. I went back to the guest house after dinner and, exhausted, passed out in about five seconds.
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