Day 34 - 38: Jaipur
Day 34
- Arrive in the afternoon and rickshaw over to my hotel.
- Checkin, settle in, hit the streets.
- Walk to and around the Old City, or Pink City. This part of the city is entirely painted in pink, and property owners, by law, must maintain this tradition. It's funny though, the "pink" paint really isn't pink.....its more of rosy-orang, or maybe it's a dirty/sandy-pink, either way, if your expecting everything to be vibrantly pink, you'll be disappointed. Regardless, it's cool to see such uniformity. The old city, if you didn't already deduce, is the oldest part of the city, and is enclosed within tall concrete/stone walls, which are also painted "pink." Needless to say, it's impossible to walk by and not notice. The inside is filled of shops, restaurants, hotels, residences, and all sorts of historical landmarks.
- Grab dinner, head back to hotel.
Day 35
- Wake up, walk back toward the Old City.
- Stop at a famous Lassi shop, LassiWala. Lassi is a cool drink made from yogurt.....kind of like a yogurt smoothy, but with less fruit or no fruit. Funny thing about India, no one seems to be concerned about copyright laws, or maybe they don't exist here, but either way, if there is a well known Lassi shop, Kabob stand, ice cream place, etc, you can bet that their will be several other store fronts in the same area with the same name, all of them claiming to be the original. Luckily, the real LassiWala is easy to distinguish. The imitators all serve other things other than lassi, and have different flavors, but the original spot only serves lassi, and it only has plain lassi served in clay cups.
- Visit the City Palace, where, surprise surprise, the royal family use to reign from. Their is still a recognized, yet non-functioning, royal family in Jaipur, and they still maintain part of the City Palace as their residence.
- Visit Jantar Mantar, an observatory built in 1728. What appears to be a collection of large abstract sculptures are actually tools of astronomical calculation. It's a weird sight, but weird in a cool way.
- Visit a couple of other historical sights in the Old City.
Day 36
- Hire a rick driver to drive me to the surrounding forts and Monkey Temple.
- Visit Amber Fort, which is the best preserved and most popular of the 3 local forts, is not actually located in Jaipur, thought few people visit Jaipur without visiting it. Amber Fort is in the town of Amber, maybe 10 km from the Old City. It is magnificent. Nestled into a mountain side, it has grand views of both the town below in the valley, as well as the mountains surrounding it. Enclosing the the fort and the town, there are long stretches of protective walls built along the mountain ridges. The fort, which is majorly comprised of the palace, itself its equally grand, built off yellow and red sandstone, as well as marble. This is definitely one of the cooler forts I have seen. I opted for the audio-tour, which was alright, but I had more fun just wandering through the maze of corridors and interconnecting rooms.....there always seemed to be multiple paths to move between any two points in this place. I won't attempt to describe the palace/fort too much, as once again, it's just something you have to see for yourself to really appreciate.
- Visit Jaigarh Fort. This fort was bare-basic. Not a lot of upkeep, pretty run down, not a lot of staff. Honestly, and especially after Amber fort, it wasn't that impressive. The one thing it had over Amber fort was the view. Jaigarh is probably just 1 km away from Amber, but Jaigarh sits on the peak of the same mountain ridge that Amber is built into. Jaigarh has a great view of Amber, and an even more splendid view of the landscape below. Other than the view, the fort is unremarkable.
- Visit Naharagh Fort. Again, not maintained very well, but this fort too is situated atop a mountain peak, and it has a great and complete view of Jaipur.
-Visit Monkey Temple. Monkey Temple is also located up on mountain top that overlooks Jaipur. I don't know if the temple itself is actually named Monkey Temple, but given the insane number of monkeys that hang out on the path that leads you up to it temple, I would guess it's just a nickname. Walking up the path is a very......unsettling, experience. There are literally just so many monkeys just hanging out, that if a fraction of them decided to swarm you, you'd be dead pretty quickly. It's kind of intimidating at first walking through so many monkeys, especially because they are so acquainted to human presence that they have no concern walking right up next to you. After a while, the anxiety of a possible monkey attack disappears.....after all, if monkey attacks were a common occurrence, it probably wouldn't be such a popular attraction.
Day 37
- Hung out, moseyed around town, ate food, drank beer, etc.
- Made friends with some young India guys. Real friends!!! They were rick drivers, but I met them when they weren't working and just wanted to hang out. This was actually kind of funny. One of the typical convo starters for scammers is: Why don't foreigners like us? Or why do foreigners ignore us? By asking questions like these, the scammer sets an expectation that you too, as a foreigner, won't be friendly toward him, and thus of course, we want to show him that foreigners can be friendly by being friendly to him. I have heard these lines a lot, so it's interesting I actually met some indians who just wanted to kick it and show me around a bit, who opened with such a line. Over the next two days we hung out, played snooker, which is similar to billiards, but has different balls, different rules, and a larger table, ate together, and drank together. It was a lot of fun to see and do what young India guys do in Jaipur.
While traveling alone can be very hard, or at least at first, it also makes you more approachable, and more interested in interacting with other people you don't know. This can be both good and bad. Scammers typically go for solo travelers, but as a solo traveler you're more likely to make local friends. I have met a lot of other travelers, who are traveling with partners or groups, and they just don't have the same stories as me. They never made friends with an older couple who made them their surrogate children, they never met an awkward young couple who insisted they stay with them in their apartment, they never followed a random guy in Mysore into "incense factories" through alleyways at night, they never made great friends with boys in Goa who actually wanted to scam them, they were more careful, and more comfortable with the company they already had, and maybe because of this they didn't really experience, learn about, and meet as many Indians as I have.
That being said, by travel with a partner, someone you know from home or will keep in touch with, you have someone who shared the same experiences as you, you have someone you can reminiscence with about "that one time," someone to relive the past with. I have grown to love traveling, to love the chaos of getting around without a set itinerary, to go with the flow and roll with the punches, to love moving from place to place whenever and whenever without having to consider responsibilities to others, which is all a little more complicated when you are traveling with someone else. But each and every day I find something that reminds me of someone at home, something that makes me think, "Man, this person would love that. I need to bring them here one day."
Traveling alone and traveling with someone both have their benefit. This is just another example of something that this trip has made me realize. Namely, so much of what we think is good or bad is a matter of perspective. It's not better to travel alone, and it's not better to travel with someone, they are simply different, and perhaps each is better suited for different people, but for me, I think I can appreciate both.
This past summer, me and my buddy Chase took two trips. One, we biked up to Milwaukee. The second, Chase, myself, and a third guy, Esau, road tripped it up to Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City. Being aways from the familiar was easier, because I was with people I knew, and for the rest of my life, when I see them, we'll have those memories in common. Just thinking about reminiscing makes me feel happy. This is something I won't have when it comes to my India trip, but again, perhaps, maybe, I have seen more, experienced more because I did this solo.
Each have their benefits, each has their hinderances, and at the end, neither is better, neither is worse, each is simply what it is and nothing else......they are different. Look at them anyway you want. You might prefer one over the other, and that's fine, to each their own, but for me, each one provide different opportunities and different struggles, and all of these add to who I am as a person.
Day 38
Hmmmmm.....what did I do on this day.....guess I'm a little far behind on keeping up with my blog.
Hung out, read, wrote, ate good food, caught a night train to Jaisalmer......only 3 hours behind schedule.
Story-Time and Reflection
Jaipur was cool. An interesting mix between new and old. I saw a hollywood movie at a top of the line movie theatre, and wandered the bustling bazars in the streets of the old city. Lots of attention from rickshaws and shop owners here, but not as pushy as in other places in India.
I was invited back to some dudes house who gave me chia, showed me his miniature paintings, which I doubt he painted, and then told that all proceeds go to a charity, though he has basically no info on the charity other than a bunch of pictures of kids. Surely, this charity was non-existent.
I was invited back to another guys place for chia, and again, he showed me all the precious stones they deal with, and suggested I learn the business......the exporting business. This one was funny, cause he warned me about the scam in which people suggest I export jewelry for them, I told him I almost got involved in that scam, and then he still continued to try and get to buy "precious stones" to bring back to the states and sell at a profit......even if any of the stones were real, he was definitely not a real businessman, and there is no doubt in my mind that he was going to do some serious over-charging. But at least he did gave me a few free items as gifts.
The street food in Jaipur was awesome. Dishes I had yet to come across since in India. I never learned the names of the food I was eating, unfortunately, as most of the street food vendors didn't speak english. Of all the people on the streets of Jaipur, I trusted the food vendors the most. For one, they don't get a lot of business from tourists, so they aren't caught up in the "lets see how much I can get this white guy to pay game." Another reason I trusted them is that they always seemed to find it very novel that this white boy was among the crowd of Indian men around their stand. They always served me before everyone else, they always looked over at me as I ate (presumably to observe my reaction), and they always seemed to really appreciate my compliments, in the form of thumbs up and a smile, when I was done.
One thing I noticed in Jaipur, as well as other areas in the north, is that fewer people speak english......even some of the more affluent looking Indians. It seems that the north has stronger remnants of the old aristocracy, and perhaps these attachments have created somewhat of a resistance against change and modernization. Many Indian's I have met see the english language as an international language, and something that will help them get a top level job or move out of India. It seems in the north that those with ties to the old aristocracy are still trying to hold on to this heritage, and learning english, while not seen as a bad things, is not seen as something that will help them reach new heights.....after all, they have royal blood. Given that these old aristocrats have held many of the government jobs in the north, there has probably been less of a focus on teaching and learning english, in general. IMPORTANT NOTE: this is total speculation on limited knowledge.....and educated guess if you would.
All and all, Jaipur was cool. A nice mix of Indian heritage and modern city amenities.
