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)
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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.
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