The India Chronicles: part two

December 27th-28th.

"Jaipur! Boom boom. Boom boom boom. Boom boom boom. Boom boom. Jaipur!" (Please read this to the tune of the Jia-ho song from slum dog millionaire. Sound familiar, Cat?)

Yesterday we had our favorite day yet, in what has so far been our favorite city, Jaipur. The day began to a very rough start at six in the morning when I was chosen by the Delhi belly gods as their next victim. After Mel was ready for the day (she wanted to look "pretty" that day so it took a while) we met the second obstacle to our goal of having a great day—Joseph. Though we had already decided to never have the same rickshaw driver for more than one trip, we were going to be traveling all around the city's perimeter, so the hotel recommended we try to find one driver that would be with us the whole day. We ask them how much we should expect to pay for a driver to take us to the five sites we wanted to visit, and they went to "bargain for us". In retrospect, it is now obvious that they went to call their friend, Joseph. I’m pretty sure we could have done the trip easily with a new driver at every site. Hindsight is 20/20 though. At the time it seemed legit. From the moment he opened his mouth I knew we were in trouble. We've come to realize that the annoyance of the rickshaw drivers is directly correlated to their ability to speak English. The ones with terrible English are usually very shy and very nice. The ones with great English never go away! "Joseph" even had an English name, so-o-o-o-o yeah...brief aside, after realizing the direct relationship between English and annoyance, we came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan: pretend we're from Spain and only speak Spanish. This would clearly neutralize their only weapon, the English language. It backfired. They know Spanish too!!!!! The ones that know Spanish are even more annoying. One of them followed us around singing the entire Macarena. Like, not just the chorus. The whole thing! I don't even know the lyrics! So—back to Joseph.

He was an older man, probably early 60’s, and very very dirty. When he pulled up he said, "Welcome to your safari on wheels. I will be your tour guide for the day." He shook both of our hands and patted our shoulders. Once we were in the car, he said he really like us, and that Mel was beautiful, and that she had a beautiful heart. He then lectured me to protect her and stay close to her and blah blah blah. He said he loved to see happiness and hear laughter. He then told the driver to pull over ( yeah Joseph wasn't even the driver!) and bought us each an Indian version of a Hawaiian lai. I then told him we wanted to be dropped by the elephant ride to the amber fort. That's when our troubles began:

“My friend, do you trust me?”

“Sure…”

“Can I tell you one thing?”

“Sure...”

“You don't want to ride the elephants. I will take you to a much better place where you can see many elephants."

“Thank you Joseph, but we have a very tight schedule and don't have time to go anywhere else.”

“My friend, do you trust me?”

“Sure, but we have plans and we want to do what we want.”

“No! You don't trust me and guess what? Now I don't like you. I don't want to talk to you anymore.”

Mel: “That's fine.” 

          About 3 minutes went by and he then pointed to some temple and told us what it was. I said, "That's cool." And he replied, "No, it’s not cool. I don't like you. You are too smart, and you will see that you are wrong." “Okay,” I said. We then drove about ten more minutes, and he turned around and said, "I am sorry my friend. I over- reacted. We all do some times right?" I simply smiled and said, “Sure”. P.S. I don’t really know how to convey this well, but just trust me that it was obvious from his tone and body language that he wanted an apology from me. One minute later, we pulled up somewhere and he says "this is where I want to take you". We were pretty ticked off and insisted that he take us to the Amber Fort immediately. We finally got there riding mostly in silence, occasionally interrupted by him telling me I would soon realize I was wrong. We got there and he started following us towards the entrance to the elephant rides telling us he wanted to be our guide in the palace. I said no, yet he kept insisting. We crossed the pay point though and the security guards kicked him out. As soon as he left, Mel and I both took a deep breath. I said, "Finally, some peace and quiet", and immediately afterwards, like IMMEDIATELY, seriously it was like a scene from a movie, a blanket was shoved in my face from behind me and someone yelled "twenty rupees" into my right ear and another yelled “fifty rupees” into my left ear while waving a t-shirt. We spent the next fifteen minutes waiting for the elephants and being showered with things we had no interest in buying. We finally got on our elephant though and had a nice quiet ride... That is until the paparazzi showed up. Several vendors taking pictures of us and yelling that they would sell us the picture for the equivalent of two dollars. We eventually rode our elephant into the palace, and like a royal couple, we were finally protected from "the people". I know I sound like a complete jerk describing this, but seriously, they bring out the worst in you. Mel agrees. Later I will describe two really nice things that happened that restored our love for Indian people. They really are amazing... when they are not trying to "help" you. We rented some audio guides like we have at every site we've been to (they are always very useful), but this one was so-o-o-o long and mundanely detailed. We decided to just ignore the guide and get lost in the maze of the palace. It was a nice, fun experience with my Tina (my name for Mel... long story... her name for me also happens to be Tina... like I said, long story), and I loved every moment of it. No hecklers in sight and such amazing views of the entire valley from a beautiful palace on top of a mountain. Life is good. When we were all done pretending to be a maharaja with his favorite maharaji, we started heading back to our friend, Joseph. We had several strategies lined up for how to deal with him, but when we got back, he was nowhere in sight! The driver eventually found us, and when we asked where Joseph was, we had to play a quick game of charades to find out that Joseph was at home asleep because he was too drunk. Suddenly all of his behavior made much more sense. Our driver spoke very little English, so we knew the rest of the day was going to be marvelous. We were not let down. Our driver took us to another fort up at the top of the mountain. Again, Mel and I just walked around enjoying the fort. This time, we were two warriors in charge of defending the kingdom from the Mughal invaders.

Rajput warrior

         Next we stopped by the picturesque water palace to take a quick pic. After that, we went to the monkey temple. So-o-o-o many monkeys and no vendors. It was amazing. We got some really good shots, but I'll only attach one of a mother nursing her baby.

This was a really touching moment, but immediately afterwards, the mother put down her baby she so could steal an apple from someone else's baby and eat it herself. Primates are such selfish creatures. After the monkeys, we just went home and relaxed the rest of the day. We hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in three nights, so we went to bed early and slept 10 hours straight.

Next day:

         Today was another very relaxing day. We woke up and went to the Jaipur palace. We learned some really cool stuff about Jaipur's founder, emperor Jai Sihng. He was apparently a warrior, poet, philosopher, architect, and astronomer. He was the one who built and designed the astronomy measurement places we saw here and in Delhi. The Mughal kings liked him so much they named him "one and a quarter" because he was 1.25 times better than any other man. After he died, his clan changed its flag to the same flag with a miniature version of the flag stuck on top of it that is 1/4 the size of the normal flag. After the palace, we ate lunch (freshly squeezed pomegranate juice!) and got on our train to Pushkar.

We've only been in Pushkar for a few hours, but we already LOVE it. The people are extremely nice here. It's a small village so there are essentially no cars, which means no constant honking. That's all you hear in the big cities. There are also cows everywhere! Just going about doing their business with no one bothering them. Must be nice to be a holy animal! Their poop is also everywhere. Their stomachs don’t process all of the grains they are fed, so after it goes through their digestive system, the pigeons have a feast with the leftovers. see picture below. Oh no wait, I have just been vetoed. Apparently it's "inappropriate" for the blog. Mel says you're welcome. Another great thing about Pushkar is that the vendors here don't try to sell you things in English. The just say “namaste” and smile.

Within ten minutes of getting off the train, we experienced two of the best stories we've had here. As soon as we got off the train in the city closest to the village, we were attacked by the usual rickshaw drivers trying to rip us off. We had no idea where the bus station was, so we went with the price a guy offered to take us there for. He took us to his rickshaw that was driven by a young boy. The boy drove us, and when we went to pay him, he just smiled and said "too much". He offered to take half of what his boss had told us, but I was so blown away that I insisted he take the extra part as a tip. We then got on our packed bus. Mel managed to get a seat, but I didn't. One guy then got up and insisted that I take his seat. I said no, but he said that we were their guest and that we must feel welcome in India. Our waiters and hotel staff were also really nice. Not only that, there are monkeys IN OUR HOTEL. These monkeys are a completely different species than the ones we've seen before. Their tails are as long as Mel. That's it for now. We are going to bed early again tonight because both of us have been struck by a mild Delhi belly again.

           Here are a couple of details I keep forgetting to post. Feel free to skip them though. I woke up pretty early and Mel's still asleep. I'm just writing everything I can think of because I want to remember it in the future and because Catherine told me to.

1.     As I mentioned before, the non-vendor people in India are extremely nice and loving. They seriously either all know each other, or are extremely nice to complete strangers. Even the rickshaw drivers are very nice to each other. They constantly ask other rickshaw drivers for directions while we're driving and they all help each other out. If we are lost and ask one person for directions, three other people will come and help get us where we need to go. Only in the markets do they then try to follow us.

2.     Our hygiene so far has been sub first-world standards. Our first hotel had no shower, just a hole on the wall of the bathroom, so we only showered once in Delhi. In Agra and Jaipur we had no hot water, so we washed our hair and took baby wipe showers. A friend recommended them for these instances. Now that we are in Pushkar, we finally have hot water and just took a very nice long shower.

3.     From the driving in the open rickshaws our boogers get really black and gross-looking.

4.     To answer Cat's question about why the family wanted to take pictures of us at the Taj Mahal: I think Indian tourists from other parts of the country have very little to no exposure to white people, so we are still a bit of a novelty to them. Mel is constantly being stared at. Not just a brief glance to check her out, but a blatant stare for entire train rides. According to her, the flattery wore off very quickly. I get some attention too. The other day, Mel was in the bathroom at one of the sites. I took the chance to reorganize my backpack and kneeled down to move things around. When I looked up, I noticed that a man was posing next to me while his son took pictures. When he realized I had caught him he skipped away. He then stopped, turned around, and said, "picture?" .

5.     The pinky hold: so-o-o-o, I don't really understand it, so I'll just report what we've seen. We were warned that PDA is frowned upon, and the guide book even says to avoid holding hands. That's completely fine. What is confusing to us though is that here, the men hold hands when walking. It's not just a hand hold though, it's a pinky hold. One man sticks out his pinky, and the other man grabs onto it as they walk. We were told about this beforehand, but we didn't really believe it till we saw it ourselves. I don't really get it at all, but I can say that it is not a romantic hand hold in any way. Watching dudes walk around holding pinkies make me wonder if there is that awkward moment when you have that first pinky hold after deciding to take your friendship to the next level. "Should I go in for the hold? Should I just wait for him to stick out his pinky? Okay, I'm just going to tell him how I feel about our friendship."

6.     Favorite rickshaw driver sayings.

A.   Right before they ask if they can drive us around for the day:

"Can I tell you just one thing?"

B.    when they want to take us somewhere we don't want to go:

"Just looking no buying. Please Madame.” (looking at Mel, obvi).

C.    When we first get into a rickshaw:

"Where are you from?"

           I know this is a basic conversation starter in all cultures, but I really can't convey how annoying it is here. It's their go-to starting point for any sale. When we drive slowly through a crowded area, people just walk up to our rickshaw and yell "where are you from?" You can't go anywhere without being asked "where are you from?". We must hear it at least forty times a day in the big cities. During the elephant ride all of the photographers kept asking "where are you from". Like I explained earlier, I've started saying "ethpaña", yes, I added the lisp, but it does backfire sometimes.

7.     Sugar pellets and grains.

After every meal, they bring you small little sugar cubes and some grains with mint to chew on for your breath.

8.     Tipping

You're expected to tip for everything. Guy opens the door for you, tip. Hotel staff takes you to your room, tip. Security guard takes a picture of us, tip. I tip sometimes, but when I don't have any change, it's always awkward when the person and I are just standing there not looking at each other. After one of these instances, the boy at the hotel opened the door to the bathroom and said, “bathroom”. He then pointed to the TV and said “TV”, and finally pointed at the room service menu and said “menu”. In another instance, the boy "taught" us how to turn on our TV and change the channel. Both ended with me saying “Okay, thank you very much,” and then pretend reading the guide book.

 

That's all I can think of for now.

December 29th

            Today was a great day in Pushkar. The small town is a very religious site that all Hindus should make a pilgrimage to at least once in their lives. It is one of the only cities in the world that is dedicated to brahma, the god who is credited with the creation of earth. The town is basically just a small lake with temples, ghats (holy bathing sites) and restaurants surrounding the lake. There's a "tradition" here, where a priest gives you a flower and then takes you down to the lake so you can release your petal into the lake and make a wish. The priest then gives you what is supposed to be a very nice blessing, and then you haggle with him for how much the blessing should cost. We've found that haggling is always hardest AFTER you consume the product, so we have refused to take any flowers from anyone. We bumped into a Canadian we had met in Jaipur (it's a small world after all), and he was really excited to have received his blessing. He said it is a big part of coming to the city and that every visitor is supposed to do it. Mel and I felt kinda bad for not letting someone give us their blessing just for the sake of getting the full Pushkar experience. That is until Matt said that the priest tried to charge him the equivalent of 20 US dollars and Matt haggled him down to one dollar. That quickly reminded us of why we were cautious. Being in Pushkar has been weird due to the contrast of its vendors with those in the cities. I tend to naturally be very curious about any trinket, and to always show a smile to any of the vendors. Over the past three cities, Mel has carefully trained me to ignore everyone and everything unless I am actually looking for something to buy. It sounds heartless and cold, but it really is the only way to avoid being pestered by gangs of vendors. Over time, we've been conditioned to go in the opposite direction of anyone saying, "hello my friend". In Pushkar though, it's the exact opposite. It reminds me much more of our honey moon in Cancún. The vendors are all really nice. They will still try to entice you to their store, but it’s completely different. It's always with a genuine smile and a simple “namaste” followed by "I have more options inside." Then that's it. (Actually there was one instance where we were told, "Namaste! would you like to spend some money?" but it was said in a nice and playful way). You can look at anything you like without being asked, "How many you like? Two? Three?" I've finally been able to unleash my curiosity again. I've stopped at almost every sword stand with the hopes of finding a replica of a really cool dagger I saw in a museum. To Mel's delight, I have yet to find one. The craziest thing about the whole process though is that there is NO haggling! Mel wanted some camel pants, so I got into my haggling mode and went into the store. After the man mentioned his first price, which I've been trained to at least half within 30 seconds, I mentioned my first price and the guy just turned around. At the second place Mel used our line, "it's not quite in our budget", to which the vendor kindly looked at me and said, "you two must increase your budget. What you buy from India should be about quality, not quantity. You want these reminders to last for years not weeks." We ended up buying two pairs of pants at the asking price. I then used part of my mom’s Christmas gift to buy ourselves a really beautiful rock sculpture that the guy made by hand. After shopping, we walked by a temple that was covered in monkeys! So many of them and with so many cute babies. I've attached another collage of monkeys.



 

 

          These are different than the ones from Jaipur. The babies look and act even more like human babies. One of them kept trying to run as far as she could from her mother, but the mom would hold the baby's two-foot-long tail, strangely resembling those kid leashes some parents use. One monkey sneaked (snook? I never remember if “sneaked” is a word) his way through the crowd into a spices stall, grabbed a bag, and took off running. It was awesome! After the monkeys, we had lunch at one of the lake-side restaurants. It was vegetarian because no meat is allowed into the town. This is great because it has forced us to try all of the dishes we want to order, but never have any room for. Here we ate some Tibetan dumplings. For dinner we had a spinach cheese curry that was amazing. We were feeling a bit homesick, so we also ordered some maxicun enchiladas.

 

"Maxicun" food--even in India

 

Our dumplings were ordered off of the "snakes" menu. Other snakes included French fries, fried cheese, and nachos.

          After lunch, we went on our three-hour camel safari around the desert mountains. The trip was a lot of fun.

 

 

We ran into some wild monkeys and goats living together. We also saw a pack of wild dogs eating away at a dead cow. Halfway through our ride, we stopped for tea at a rest stop and watched the sun set. We then rode back into town and had dinner. This was such an amazing and relaxing day. We had debated whether or not we should cut Pushkar so we could spend more days in the big cities, but I'm really glad we didn't. It was a nice break from the hustle and bustle.

 December 30-31

Happy New Year! It is now January first in India, and I am sitting on my hotel bed in Udaipur overlooking a beautiful river, sitting next to my even more beautiful sleeping wife. I'll talk about what Mel and I did for New Year’s Eve later, but it involved a lot of talking and reflecting over the past year. Mel and I turned 23 and 24, respectively, which means we are now pretty much adults. : (this is something I've avoided for years, but now that it's here it doesn't seem too bad. Our first full year together was filled with so many blessings. We got to travel to England, Spain, Germany, Italy, Scotland, France, Wales, the Netherlands, Morocco, and of course India. We also got to make so many new friends that we love and will stay in touch with for the rest of our lives. Most importantly, our first full year of marriage, which people warned us would be the hardest, was the best year yet out of our nine-year relationship (OMG we're headed towards a decade! 2013 better be great!). 2012 wasn't great because of all of the great adventures we had though; it was great because we were finally together for a full year. We were also able to meet new versions of each other that we hadn't really been exposed to. For example, I got to meet the crowd-pleasing Mel that somehow gets everyone to fall in love with her at large gatherings. Mel got to meet the slightly OCD version of me that is extremely indecisive when it comes to unimportant decisions and is obsessed with making even my messes have some sort of logical structure. In summary, 2012 was the best year of our now not-so-short lives.

          Anywho—back to our story. The last two days have been great. The 30th was a pretty mellow day. We walked into town and soaked in the peacefulness one last time before getting on our train. We then spent most of the day traveling to Udaipur, known as the Venice of India and India's most romantic city. The city was semi put on the map by the old Sean Connery James Bond movie, Octopussy (I wish I was making this title up. Look it up). We thought that because it was a city, it would be more like Agra and Jaipur in terms of the madness. We were totally wrong! As soon we got off the train we realized we were in for a treat because the rickshaw drivers just chilled by their vehicles and waited for us to come to them. When we asked how much to go to the hotel, they charged exactly what the guide book said, not two times as much.

            We slept in the morning of the 31st, and then went to the hotel's restaurant for our complimentary breakfast. It was fantastic! They gave us an aloo paratha, which was basically a very spicy quesadilla stuffed with potatoes. We then went to the city palace where the Merwal dynasty has ruled for something crazy like 14 centuries. It is the longest continuous royal family in the world. They seem like amazing rulers too. The Merwal clan was never the most powerful or the wealthiest, but what they lacked in power they made up for in wit and bravery. They were the only kingdom that never recognized the Mughal Empire and then later the British Empire. Most kings and generals rode on elephants during battles in other kingdoms. The Merwals chose to ride on horses that were decorated as elephants. This made the elephants of their rivals think the horses were baby elephants, which they would never attack. The rulers were very religious and believed they were not given their power to exploit the people, but rather to protect and serve them. Even today, the royal family continues to be instrumental in running the city. They were the ones that pushed for Octopussy to be filmed in Udaipur. They also pushed for making the city as beautiful and tourist friendly as possible, and I'm sure are partially responsible for the welcoming atmosphere. The vendors are all very polite, as are the security forces at the museum (who tend to be rude and standoffish). We had the chance to go to the New Year dinner with the royal family, all for the low price of 200 dollars per ticket but had to turn it down.

After walking around the palace, we got on a boat and rode to a very small island in the middle of the lake. We walked around and took some great posing shots by the revamped palace-turned-hotel. During the boat ride we were sitting near two very wealthy Indian-American families. The kids upset me so-o-o-o much. Such a ridiculous sense of entitled towards everything. I feel like I should already be praying that our kids grow up understanding how blessed they are to grow up in the US. I decided that if they ever complain during a trip, we will send them on a plane back by themselves and make them write essays over what they have done to deserve any of the things they have. Mel thinks I'm bluffing....Hopefully we'll never have to find out.

          After the boat ride, we went to the royal family's crystal collection and their vintage car collection, and that was basically it for the day. After that we went shopping for an item I saw in the museum and knew I couldn't leave India without: an Indian dagger. I shopped around and the cheapest I could find was about 80 US dollars. I was terribly bummed and gave up. When we got to the hotel though, I went into one last store right across our hotel where the guy was making the swords himself. He was so-o-o nice. I eventually managed to get one for the equivalent of 35 US dollars. I was very happy. This has been our most expensive souvenir yet, but it is well worth it. P.S. Mel begs to differ.

After that, we got ready for our New Year's Eve plans. We had initially booked a table for the small reception happening in our hotel's restaurant. We felt really lame staying in our hotel for New Year’s though, so when we heard about a fancy dinner happening at one of the very very nice hotels, we decided to go for it. The dinner was....interesting. Though the food was very good, Mel and I seem to always forget how lame we are at parties. They had a D.J. and lots of people were dancing. I hate dancing though, so we basically just sat there for five hours. It was actually really fun just sitting there talking, but we could have easily done that in our own hotel for much cheaper. The only thing that made it worth it was a short period of entertainment by traditional Indian dancers. They balanced up to nine pots on their heads while standing on a flat pan and using their movement to make the pan bang out a steady beat. It was amazing.

Pots dance

New Year's Post

 

 As soon as 12 o’clock midnight came, we got on a taxi and headed home. Though we felt a little bad spending so much just so we could see ourselves as not lame, it was still pretty worth it for a few stories. First, our cab driver to the party was amazing. Such a nice man! He talked a lot, but in a very nice and good way. He described himself as a chatter box, but we were delighted to have him chatter away. When I was telling him how much we loved Udaipur, he summed it up perfectly. He said the vendors in Udaipur are friendly, they speak English very well, and most importantly, they know the meaning of the word "no". He also gave us some great sayings:

 

In life there are two things to worry about. Are you healthy or are you ill? If you are healthy there is nothing to worry about. If you are ill there are two things to worry about. Are you going to get well or are you going to die? If you are going to get well, there is nothing to worry about. If you are going to die, there are two things to worry about. Are you going to heaven or are you going to hell? If you are going to heaven, there is nothing to worry about. If you are going to hell, you'll see so many old friends there that you won't have time to worry about anything.  

After the trip, he gave us his business card in case we needed any rides the next day.

          The second thing that made the New Year's Eve party worth going to was people-watching. In America, it's very common for heterosexual women to go dancing with each other just for fun. The same thing happens here with heterosexual men. They got so-o-o into it. It was a lot of fun to watch big sweaty men tearing up the dance floor together. The party was pretty lame at first, with only little kids dancing. The music was western club music. (Another brief aside: there was a remix song of Obama's yes we can speech. People are OBSESSED with him here. Even if they don't speak English, they will know three words: Hello, America, and Obama. There's lots of love for our head-of-state here. Whether or not you guys agree with Barry, I think we can all agree it’s nice to have a president that is so respected globally). Mel and I kept watching to see when the party would start. They eventually started to play remixes of Hindi songs, and at first just kids went up and danced. Then one couple went up and danced. Once I saw them, I told Mel that as soon as another couple went up there, the party would get going. I grabbed her hand, and off we went to the dance floor. Within 20 seconds of us being on the dance floor, everyone went on the dance floor and started going crazy. It was a blast. All of the details I have just written were true. The only small lie is that we weren't the couple that got the party going. We just watched. Still, it would have been a cool story if we were, right? We sat and watched the dance floor for the next four hours laughing at how lame we were. Then came time for the count-down. They stopped the music, and the countdown began. "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10! Happy New Year!" Mel and I were so-o-o confused. We weren't sure if he was counting to 3, 5, 10, or 60. When they fired the fireworks, we just stared at each other in confusion. We eventually hugged then headed straight home.

The next morning we woke up and went back into the city. We went into a Hindu temple that was built in 1651. It was very pretty. We then just walked around the city and stopped to get some desserts....twice. We had a nice long break at a restaurant that overlooked the main city and talked about 2013 for a while. I can't believe it's already time to start planning for our return to the US. It's all coming so fast!

We're now back at our hotel waiting a little bit before our next massage. I was too ticklish last time, so this time I'm just getting a back, neck, and shoulders massage. Mel's going for the full body again and getting a manicure too. We hope to get very nice and relaxed from this massage because tonight we take off on our 17 hour trip to Mumbai. I hope you all enjoy this post as much as my first one. It's a lot less coherent than the first because I blogged more often and never got into a writing groove. Happy New Year!