They don't call it WORLD Wrestling Entertainment for nothing

Finished up the Jaipur weekend by waking up early Sunday morning and hailing myself a private bicycle rickashaw. As the Nike shop was closed, I decided to go back to the historic old city/bazaar area (which my friendly driver happily accepted for twenty rupees, I think he was happy to have scooped up the only tourist that was awake and out in Jaipur at that hour). He took me the entire length of the path we’d walked the day before, and at under fifty cents, I’d say it was well worth it. Not a bad deal for the bike guy either – only having to cart around one tourist, weighing less than 150lbs.

During our makeshift tour, I basically read off all the Indian names of the sights I hadn’t seen from my map and he’d take me there as soon as he could mentally decode my seemingly horrible accent ("Can you go now to the jaemah mass jheed?" ...thirty second pause as I repeat and repeat..."oh jaemah mass jheed, yes yes") and wait while I took pictures and struggled to bargain with shop keepers. It was a good arrangement, and he even let me pay him whatever I felt by the time we’d gotten back to Evergreen. This gave me a fantastic (and still unimplemented at time of posting) idea to hire three separate bicycle rickashaws and have each of the three members of our group get carted off to some far off destination, promising to pay the first peddler to arrive quadruple fare ($2?) and the losers a normal fare plus a few rupees for the effort.

My other Jaipur inspired transportation game idea involves the mob of tuktuk drivers which inevitably forms whenever a traveler shows he’s interested in taking one (and sometimes even when he isn’t). I’d need a translator to explain it, but I would begin calling out progressively larger prices, staring around 10 rupees, until the first driver accepts the current floor offer. None of the other driver’s would earn fare if they were under bid by one of their comrades and I would call the auction off after reaching a certain unannounced reservation price and everyone would lose out on the fare. I know tuktuk drivers make well below $5 a day, but it never fails to insult when one tries to scam you by saying a certain ride will cost nine or ten times you know what its worth. It may only be a few quarters you’re getting schemed out of, but those rupees seem to add up quickly, especially when you spend a weekend in Jaipur. It’s the principle of the matter, isn’t it?


We ate lunch at a chic restaurant overlooking one of the main streets (meal at a nice restaurant in the city: US$2) and met three British girls outside of the Jaipur zoo. We collectively decided to avoid the zoo and its Rs. 90 foreigner entry fee (locals Rs. 5), and instead sat out in a park next to the gigantic Prince Albert Museum. Needless to say, a large crowd slowly assembled around us and passersby on the sidewalk would climb up onto the park fence and gawk in at our extraordinarily average conversation. We had become a zoo exhibit outside of the zoo. We talked a bit about England and the states and the novelties of India (the stares, the sneaky taking of photos, the wondering how we were so interesting) as people kept focus on us, snuck camera phone pics, and beggars and families and normal park goers alike slowly surrounded us in quite amazement. And it’s not like Jaipur is even that detached from the West; its basically India’s preeminent tourist city. We took a tiny horse drawn carriage the half mile or so to McDonalds for dinner.


Before heading back to Jhalrapatan, we had a few Kingfishers at an Indian bar. Like all bars here, they are very discrete – no large neon signs on the outside. The customers, it goes without saying, are all male. There’s usually some cricket playing on TV, but as the West Indies vs India match was under rain delay, good ol American Pro Wrestling was on instead. In addition to sitting next to an old man on a rickety carriage who fed our one horse power engine some grass after taking us to McDonalds, I think I’ll file watching WWE in a dark and quiet Indian bar under my memory’s ‘Only in India’ moments.

We got back to the house early Monday morning and practically reset off for class the minute we entered the door, allowing just enough time to fill our water bottles. During the next week of IDEX class, the older kids would be introduced to ‘Around the World’ and two team do-a-math-problem-on-the-board races and whatever other activities we could remember from our old elementary days.

While Magnus departed our camp to go back to the mountainous north, where the weather is cooler and the hash cheaper, and Rick fell ill midweek, leaving me to entertain the kids alone, I learned via email that the combination of slowly cashed checks and using my card in Jaipur a grand total of one time had conspired to cause me to overdraw my checking account for the second time this year. Finding myself insolvent for the third summer in a row, I believe I’d hit the low point of my time in India, and yet I really didn’t feel a grain of anxiety. I should probably put here that I was relaxed because during my time abroad, I’d truly found myself and had connected enough with my person to not be concerned with petty everyday issues which would have formerly wrecked me. Or perhaps I could say I’d adopted a more Eastern outlook on life after realizing the hollow pageantry my life in the West had centered upon and wasn’t phased by a few mere setbacks of that self. But really I just felt like my bank was half a world away and I wasn’t in dire need of money anyways and I’d actually taken a liking to the crippling isolation I’d been able to find in India (for the first time since first starting at Iowa and not really knowing anyone.) Not that crippling isolation’s necessarily a good thing, but it’s always good for the old soul to get some quiet in every now and then and probably the reason I came to India. And as far as that goes, what a good vacation it has been.

^Another scene I'd only until recently seen in history books. Did I mention Chandya Kheri reminds me of old time Iowa? There was one modern John Deere store in Bundi (John Deere who, if I remember correctly, got his start by selling innovative new plows like the one above) and I saw John Cena of the WWE wearing colors and clothing alluding to the Deere brand during one of the televised Monday Night Raw programs here. So it's not that different after all.