Jaipur Again

Since we didn’t really get a chance to see the city while passing through for orientation, we had decided to take the overnight bus back to Jaipur, Friday after class. After staying in for travel recovery the weekend prior, my first weekend excursion was kicked off with a nine hour bus ride back the way I’d come from. For under US$5, I got to ride alongside Devo in an (actually quite comfy) sleeper class double bed. We had two large windows right beside us, but the thirty to fifty minute long stops at every other highway town’s bus stations meant no window air flow AND no AC for large portions of the night. Add in the twenty note (believe it) novelty song horn our driver frequently relied, and you start to see the cruel irony in designating a section of the bus as ‘sleeper’ (though we had a private door so it was actually quieter than the train’s sleeper class).

We got into Jaipur around 6am, a little groggy and a lot lost. There were rickashaw and tuktuk drivers sleeping in their vessels everywhere. Taking care not to wake any for fear of being mobbed by the dozens (“Yes hello! Ok hello! Hello; Where you go? I take you hello tuktuk my tuktuk hello lets go yes”), we walked to our hotel – the one we’d read about in the book (Lonely Planet India Guidebook, “Evergreen Hotel, it’s like a backpacker’s haven meets dorm hall”) – taking directions from a group of very hardcore-looking-travelers from New Zealand who’d overslept on their bus for six hours and ended up at the end of the line, standing next to us in Jaipur.

Once to the Evergreen, I fought the urge to flop, opting instead to read in the lobby. I met two Koreans and another English girl and made significant progress on my book, yet still fell asleep on the lobby couch (incidentally, in the exact same spot the English girl had been sleeping). The lobby staff must’ve been amused. This was like a dorm hall.

Once we’d all rested enough to fool our bodies into thinking they could handle the sun again, we set off for the famous Jaipur shopping scene. There are many Western name brands stores throughout the city proper but the real fun is in the chaotic and crowded (words that can describe anything Jaipur-related) bazaar alleys within the city walls. My haggling skills weren’t quite developed by then and I realized days later (and sometimes instantly) how many rupees I’d go about overpaying all day. I did, however, find an econ book I’d been looking for forever (US$6!) and the prices at McDonalds were thankfully fixed.

Despite deciding against paying the ridiculous ‘foreigner’ charges to enter the main historical sights, we did manage to get a good (and free) view of the city. While waiting at a street corner, a man complemented me on not spending money on a guidebook and drawing my own tourist map (I traced it out of the Lonely Planet, now sitting in Magnus’ backpack) and gave us directions up a back alley spiral staircase leading to a rooftop panorama of the entire Jaipur old city and surrounding forts and mountains.

We were soon joined by three Europeans who’d also caught the local tip. When two Indian men then came up the staircase, I thought we’d just been had and had blindly walked into an elaborate mugging scheme. We were trapped on the rooftop so I decided to talk to one of the guys (cause friendly people never get mugged) who turned out to be a gem dealer, owner of the whole building complex, and not a criminal. He invited us into his office (a big one behind a big jewelry showroom) and we only left after another of his friends entered the office and locked the door behind him, thinking we were probably about to get jumped or sold into the sex trade or both (probably how that guy afforded such nice shoes).

The Jaipur McDonalds was packed each of the four times I visited. By the looks of it, I think eating there is a sort of hip thing to do for the younger generation of upwardly mobile Jaipurians (the girls who wear jeans). Maharajahs are the fifty two heads of the millennium old nobility lines throughout the state, which is why Rajasthan is called “The Land of Kings.” Even today they command great wealth and far reaching influence (though Indira Ghandi stripped them of their nobility titles forty years ago). The largest sandwich on the Indian McDonalds menu is called ‘Maharajah Mac’. Even by the standards of a kid who went to public school and grew up in the microwavable nineties, the chicken on all the sandwiches was horrible, especially the Maharajah Mac. That didn’t stop me from dining Mickey D’s a handful of times, as I don’t not mind fake chicken and it was, after all, the fourth of July so McDonalds just seemed appropriate.

And what a fourth it was! As the Fore Fathers would’ve wanted, we celebrated by drinking Indian beer on the roof of the backpacker’s hotel with a Japanese guy, an English woman, and a pair of French girls, listening to the music of a nearby Hindu wedding, and cheering some whenever fireworks went off (there were a few). Happy birthday Amurika (and Nolan).


^Speaking of America, there are many of these giant six story malls around the bustling parts of Jaipur. After visiting two, it was discovered that they are almost completely devoid of shops, save for the first one and a half floors. They look nice, at least.


^Took a tuktuk out to Bani Park to see the in-home studio of one of India's late great potters who also won the "Best Indian Citizen" some years back for bringing world class art back to Jaipur.


^The building that's featured on many a Wikipedia page on both Rajasthan and Jaipur (meaning it's a big deal).