The Diary A lie-in, and then we wandered round the corner to the bus station and booked on the 12:15 to Jaipur. It was all too easy. Lazed around the tourist bungalow for a couple of hours & then caught the bus. The best and coolest bus so far only spoilt by the petulant baggage handler refusing to drop us off near the Atithi guest house because we hadn't paid our 2rp baggage charge. We were furious, he'd only had 7 hours to ask for it. In the end it didn't matter because it was easier to book our bus to Delhi while we were at the bus station.
They were glad to see us at the Atithi and gave us our old room back. I wonder how many guests they've had. We went to the Rainbow restaurant round the corner & Oz ordered chicken tikka masala for the 3rd time. I had chicken fried rice, french toast & a chocobar!
2012 Some random images of Jaipur that I nicked from the interweb
A slow start, we weren't too keen to go flying into the outside world after the hassles of the previous days. When we did get going we went to the bus station and booked an express luxury bus to Udaipur. We then walked through the old town and to the base of the hill that Nahargarh (or Tiger) Fort overlooks the town from. It was noon and we had no water but we still made the climb. Mad dogs and Englishmen. The view was worth it and there was a cafe at the top. We then walked down through the town and all the way to Niro's with hardly any hassle at all. Why can't it always be like that?
The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the paperback copy of the 1992 Guinness book of records which cost 150rp and kept Oz and I amused for the remainder of the day. Norris on the spot: (1) Pepsi's profits are greater than Coke's - could be due to Pepsi's monopoly on the Indian market. (2) Sarendra Apharya of Jaipur India succeeded in writing 1314 characters on a single grain of rice on 28 Feb 1991.
2012 The first Guinness Book I ever got was the 1974 edition. I got it for xmas and I reckon I'd memorised pretty much every record in it by the time we were back at school after the first week of January.
Indians are just as obsessed with Guninness World Records as I was - see here.
We walked into town via the GPO and were accosted by several shansh marnie men, rickshaw-wallahs and salesmen. The worst episode was a group of students who wanted to know about Europe and went about it in the most heavy handed way possible including grabbing Oz, trying to force money on him and chasing us on a moped. We then had a big argument with them but I eventually agreed to tell them about Europe for 5 mins. They never did realise why we were so upset with them. Indians seem to have very little concept of personal space or respect for other peoples feelings especially the desire to be left alone.
We then went to the museum, where we were more of an attraction than the poor collection of exhibits. The building itself was quite impressive though. We had an incredibly bland vegetarian meal at the LMB and then caught a bus to Amber. The palace and fort were very impressive but the hard walk up to the fort didn't really justify the few poor attractions inside. The only decent one was the world's biggest cannon on wheels and that was hidden away in a corner.
Went to the bank to change money but was told the bureau de change didn't open until 11am. Then I was told it was open. Then I was told it didn't open until 11:30am. The rate was about 25rp to the dollar which I thought very poor. As soon as we stepped outside the bank we were accosted by a shansh marnie man and I agreed on 28rp / dollar for $250 of travellers cheques. We got in an auto-rickshaw with him and were taken several miles to a carpet factory. The owner offered to show us around but we said no with a capital N. While we waited they kept asking if we liked carpets, textiles etc. which always received the same reply. When the man came with the money he said he could only give me 27 point something, at which point I got up to leave. He actually went back to 28 but took out the cost of the rickshaw. Blooming heck. We hurriedly left before they started talking carpets again.
Hawa Mahal
We walked back and visited the museum/palace, the observatory and the Hawa Mahal (or palace of winds). We also had some photos developed and realised what a problem the dusty light can be in India. We then caught a rickshaw to Niro's, the best restaurant in town, and had good, non-Indian food. We looked around the next-door book shop and retreated to our room for the rest of the evening.
2012 If you go to India, you'd better like carpets. And marble. And samosas. And mango.
A more relaxing 5-hour journey on an express bus to Jaipur. Clean, cooler (just), our bags in the boot not on the roof and only one stop at a government run transport stop so we could eat & drink. We even read the Sunday papers.
View Larger Map At Jaipur we had little trouble with the rickshaw mafia and arrived at the guest house of our choice. It was spotless and modern and we were very impressed. Well done, Neil, Sarah & Tony Wheeler. We lazed around, wrote letters, read & then went for food. On the way back we were accosted by a friendly rickshaw-wallah named Mohammed who had us read his letters, look at his photos and listen to his life story. He was determined to get his business without asking for it but we didn't oblige. Back at the Thita G.H. we talked with the owner about rickshaw mafia, the power of LP and the woes of the off season. It also rained a little bit today for the second day running.
2012 Neil, Sarah & Tony Wheeler - who were Neil and Sarah?
This guest house was fantastic - the owners had fantastic pride in it and it was absolutely spotless. They'd been suffering for business because of the wording in the current India Lonely Planet which seemed to suggest that another local guest house was better. It's amazing what impact a badly worded sentence in LP had. It could have been make or break for this guest house despite all the effort they put in
