Well, we are finally connected again. We tried a few times in the last towns, but between power outages in the afternoon and evenings and 33K modem connections… we gave up. We’ve got a few entries from the past few days that I typed up on Derrell’s laptop, so hopefully we’ll get those back entries posted.
As for Jaipur, India has gone hot. It is getting up to 95 degrees in the shade. Add two people with digestive systems that are not up to snuff, allergies for one of us and a persistent cold for the other and I think we’ve progressed to the whining stage of the trip. That is, when we aren’t guzzling water.
India is starting to look the same to us, but definitely not normal. How can you call a country where your animal count includes camels pulling carts, decorated horses pulling carts and oxen pulling carts through an intersection that has countdown crosswalk timers? Oh, and a few cows on the median strips along with a pot-bellied pig or two rummaging through the garbage just to spice up the smells and view, while a guy in pristine white wearing a turban walks by talking on a cell phone?
There are a few differences in Jaipur from the other towns. It has an industrial center, so the poverty does not look as severe. Hey, it even has paved streets, some global joints (Pizza Hut, McDonald’s) and a knock-off Starbucks chain, called Barista. This along with a bigger variety of sitdown restaurants means that there is actually a middle class here. We have stepped back into the modern portion of the country. Well, at least when you squint and ignore the farm animals.
Shopping is a big deal here. We’ve seen groups of women bargaining in the brightest colored fabric stores on the planet. The rows of cloth are vibrant saffrons, yellows, reds and pinks. Many bolts are translucent with sparkles and embroidery. Everyone’s shoes are off and piled outside the store. The white mattresses that cover the shop floors have layers of fabric that is currently being displayed to the women who are carefully discussing and inspecting it. The men working the store are pointing, explaining and pulling more folded cloth from walls stacked with colors that would make sun look pale. We were curious just how long it took to make a sale. Everyone looked like they were camped out for the day and making a good tea party out of the event.
We wandered the bazaar streets of the Pink City, watching where we stepped, and passed all sorts of one room stores. Kitchen goods, VCD players, cassette music shops with a handful of CDs for sale, tire shops, automotive scooter and motorcycle repair row, food stalls, sweet shops, marigold flowers for shrines in piles on sheets, western wear piles, cabinet handles displayed, bracelet and bangle specialty kiosks, handmade mirror stands, basket weavers, furniture makers and a few chickens in cages. An amazing amount of stuff, an amazing amount of smells, an amazing amount of soot from the rickshaws going by in the streets, and as always, an amazingly large quantity of cows to walk around.
We visited the City Palace in the center of the Pink City (the Brits painted the entire city pink inside the city walls in honor of some dude in the 1800’s and the colorwash has stayed in vogue ever since). We inspected two silver urns, reputed to be the largest pieces of silver in the world - forged in 1890 to carry the water of Ganges to England. They looked very urn-like, a bit shiny, enough so that we could see our blurry reflections, and about our height. A fine addition to any oversized outdoor palace grounds, I’d reckon. Some dude wouldn’t bathe or drink anything but. I guess that was before the river went septic. The grounds also had a number of carriages and royal conveyances that dripped with style and luxury. Those guys were living the good life.
Considering yesterday’s train ride to get here, we pondered travel in the 1800’s. For instance, being hauled along behind some oxen in one of these carriages we were looking at, over bumpy roads, of course, really sounds like some humorous quirk buried in the caste system for those too rich to walk. On the other hand, travel in the 2000’s hasn’t really improved matters all that much. We had a train ride that was a 26-hour lurching ordeal with starts, stops and people slamming the door on the way to the loo all night long. So, as for yesteryear and still today, we cannot deduce why anyone voluntarily travels long distances in this country on anything but foot.
