Post #75 - December 25, 2012 - Jaipur, India

What we did: Bapu Bazaar, walked streets of Jaipur, overnight bus ride to Jaisalmer
Budget: 3500R/$70; Spent:2004R/$40

Once again, our day in Jaipur consisted of shopping, shopping, and more shopping. Our day began around 9:00am with a call from Patty’s dad over Skype. Since we were still pretty groggy, we thought it better to wake up a bit and call back at 9:30am. We checked out today from our hotel so we packed a little bit before heading up onto the roof. We ordered breakfast and then Skyped with Patty’s family who were celebrating Christmas Eve and Elena and Chris' house (Patty's cousins). Sounded like they were having quite the feast. Made us miss home a lot. It was very nice to hear from everyone and that people are actually missing our blog right now! We are still trying to catch up from the days we spent in Delhi with no internet access. I feel bad for Patty’s cousin Chris Caligiuri: I think he is truly lost without our blog. Don’t worry Chris, we’ll catch up in no time!

After talking with Patty’s family, we called my parents and brother Chris over Skype. It was so nice to talk to them and made me long for home. It’s tough being away from home over Christmas. I keep thinking about the food, the coziness, and the warmth of home. And by warmth, I mean in sweat pants, hoodie, and wrapped in a blanket. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to speak with my brother Ivan and Izabela and little Marky. I hope to be able to speak to them soon! 

    

After breakfast we decided to see if my suit and linen pants and Patty’s kurta were ready. After about a five minute walk, we were greeted by Luis and welcomed inside. He wished us both a merry Christmas, both in English and Spanish, and then brought me my stuff. I tried on the suit first. I am extremely pleased with how it turned out. The material feels fantastic and it fits like a glove. He offered to ship it home, but unfortunately that would have cost $50, so we declined. Next up, my linen pants. Once again, the pants were a perfect fit. They weren’t exactly the colour we were looking for, since there is some brown in there, but I was very happy. We had low expectation for how nicely Patty’s kurta would turn out, but it actually came out quite nice. It’s pretty simple, but the colours are beautiful. Here is a pic:

We had a nice chat with Luis before heading out the door. We decided to go to the post office immediately to ship my suit home. We jumped into an auto-rickshaw and went straight there. Unfortunately, as we were arriving, the post office was closing. They must have had only a half day of work today since it’s Christmas Day. We set aside our disappointment and headed back out to do some shopping. We decided to walk to the major bazaars from the Post Office and stopped in some shops along the way. We came across a beggar that was sitting outside one of the shops at the bazaar. We remembered we had one of my t-shirts in our bag that we were looking to get rid of so Patty went up to him to give him the t-shirt. At first I don't think he knew what it was. We continued to another shop and as we came out we saw him taking off his old shirt and putting on the new red one. Although this pic doesn't show it, he was very happy and that made us happy. Several store workers were outside smiling at watching the whole thing.

We remembered how much we enjoyed walking through the streets rather than getting rides. It’s kind of unfortunate in India that rickshaws and auto-rickshaws are so cheap it makes walking nearly pointless.

We had a strange number of people, mostly locals, tell us “merry Christmas”, but it was mostly in good spirit, I think. Once we got to a bazaar, we began looking around. The goal today was pillow covers, sunglasses and a hat for me, and a couple packages of bindis. We probably went through one thousand pillow covers in the couple hours we were in the bazaars, but no luck. Patty is pretty particular! She wants some pillow cases to match the painting we bought in Hanoi. I can’t even remember what the painting looked like so she’s getting no help from me! We were, however, successful in picking up sunglasses for me and some bindis. Patty is becoming hilariously good at bargaining. Even I can’t tell whether she wants anything, anymore. On one occasion, we left a shop and I asked her why she bought a scarf because it looked like the vendor practically forced her to buy it; she then told me that she absolutely loved it and that she wanted it all along! I had no idea my wife could be so sneaky!

We were getting pretty hungry by late afternoon so we returned to the restaurant we had gone to with Arno, the guy from Belgium, a couple nights ago. It is a beautiful restaurant during the day. It is on the top of an old city wall overlooking a bazaar. The sun was shining, but it wasn’t too hot. Unfortunately, our food wasn’t quite as good as the view. It wasn’t bad, but the two dishes we bought were a little too similar to each other, and similar to the ones we had bought a couple nights ago.

From here we decided to start walking back to our hotel. On our way we grabbed an ice cream cone that turned out to be pretty good. We came across a funny sign on our walk. The word "rajputana" is used often in Rajasthan. The word "putana" is a swear word in Italian. At the very least I think Patty's sister and Dan will find this pic mildly amusing:

People continued to say “merry Christmas” to us, until finally one guy kept talking to us and told us about a Christmas festival that was happening tonight. We are both very wary of people being too nice, and this guy was definitely being too nice. He was getting all deep about life. He told us he was a social worker and an artist and then showed us a business card which was his attempt to prove he was a social worker. It was all a little too staged, especially in retrospect. He then offered to pick us up on his motorcycle to take us to this Christmas festival and was ready to give us his cell number so that once we got back to the hotel we could call him to pick us up.  He pressured us to go with him a couple times during the conversation. In the moment so much is happening, it can all get a bit overwhelming. You're trying to be polite with your responses while gauging the person and keeping your guard up. It was creepy how good of a talker he is though. I’ve noticed that some people like to use a line like “why don’t foreigners like Indian people” to make us feel guilty for not stopping to talk to them. This guy had by far the most conniving approach. It was all very psychological what with his social worker profession and business card, making us feel guilty for not stopping to chat with him. He had so many lines to make us take our guard down. He even apologized for perhaps seeming too friendly. Afterward, Patty said she got a really bad vibe from the guy that she just couldn't shake off. Although I didn’t feel quite as strongly about it, there’s no doubt that 99.9% of the time, people are trying to get something out of you rather than actually help you out. It’s sad people like that make it very difficult to trust anyone. It was also concerning that perhaps our younger more naive selves may have actually taken him up on his offer had our train ride to Jaisalmer not been that night.  

We took an auto-rickshaw back to the hotel and then changed into warmer clothes in the storage room/wifi lounge. The hotel owner’s son then invited us to the roof to see what they had done for Christmas. Turns out they had decorated it nicely, and even set up a tree! OK, it was a pretty sad looking tree, but it did make it feel like Christmas. We’re desperate, OK!?

The owner’s son told us that his wife had prepared a cake so we had to wait for it to be served. Unfortunately, our bus was leaving in less than an hour so we were getting a little worried. He rushed the cake so that we could have some before leaving. It was a pretty simple chocolate cake, but very tasty. All the staff and family came up to cut the cake. It was really sweet. What a nice place! We’re really happy we stayed there.

We pretty much ate and ran. I’m pretty sure the owner’s son had arranged a rickshaw to pick us up, although he didn’t even mention this. He was an outstanding host. The rickshaw was waiting outside and it was bigger than usual so it could accommodate our luggage. The ride took less than 10 minutes. The bus depot was a hole in the wall, but at least the bus we were going to take looked decent. After picking up some waters and photocopying our ticket, we boarded the bus with our luggage. We had booked sleeper seats side-by-side. The beds were arranged above the normal seats on the bus. We clamored into our bunks with our luggage via ladders built into the bus. A nice touch was that there were sliding glass doors with curtains that gave us some privacy. Unfortunately, unlike in China, we were not provided with any sort of bedding.

Once we had our things arranged so we could comfortably lie down, we pretty much just closed our eyes. We were surprisingly tired after a not-so-busy day!