Destination:
India – Rajasthan –
Jaipur – Never wear your
pants inside out!
So, we leave
Pushkar, for Jaipur to catch our overnight train to Amritsar. All nice, all
well, all good. Our Taxi is an old white Ambassador, a bit of added old
colonial charm to our journey. Half way into the journey, I noticed that my travelling
pants (Ali Baba or sarouel, depending where you are) are inside out. Not a good
omen at all, but what can I do? Can’t change them over inside the taxi and
shock the nice old driver. Don’t panic
woman, not yet anyway.
So, we get to
the train station, hot and bothered, people everywhere, and guess what? Our
train has been cancelled. First we say, yeah right, it’s the oldest trick in
the book, only to find out there is a four day strike and ALL trains up north have
been cancelled. As I said before, never wear your pants inside out.
So, the good
thing (there’s always a good thing) is that our driver from Pushkar saw us in
the refund line and told us he would wait and take us to a hotel. Now we are
really glad we tipped him, well invested 100 rupees. So he does take us to a
decent hotel and now we have a lot of planning and regrouping to do. We have to
call an urgent Lavor-Hopkins crisis management meeting.
Next morning,
we decide to “make lemonade” with the train lemon, and we are off to see
Jaipur. Our rickshaw driver, Yash, is very nice and protective of us. He takes
us to the Observatory, the fantastic Amber Fort (great pics), the Lake Palace
and the Monkey Temple, where Paul not only feeds but also runs away from the
crazy monkeys. I was already miles away, brave as I am. We finish our day at McDonalds,
where we shout Yash for a chicken burger. Jaipur is not a bad city at all.
There’s plenty to see, the bazaar is huge and the traffic is OK. We go back to
the hotel and start planning our next stop. Ciao Rajasthan, hello Delhi!
