What we did: Bus ride to Jaisalmer, Hotel/Safari booking, explored streets inside fort, post office
Budget: 3500R/$70; Spent:3570R/$71
If there is a hell out there, today we experienced a small sliver of it. Except for us, instead of scorching heat, our own personal little hell on earth consisted of freezing cold. I am, of course, referring to our bus ride from Jaipur to Jaisalmer. I have never in my life been so cold for so long. It was almost absurd how cold we were. I said to Patty yesterday that either the bus will be super extravagant or it will be horrible. Unluckily for us, it was the latter.
The bus ride started out innocently enough. It was chilly, but nothing we couldn’t handle considering all the layers we were wearing. I was even mocking the horn of the bus, which sounded like one of Dan’s bird calls and we were both laughing hysterically trying to mimick him. Slowly but surely, though, as night set in, the chill turned to cold, which turned to frigid. What made it worse was that there were two windows to the outside that kept spontaneously opening. This, in combination with the sliding door to the rest of the bus spontaneously opening, resulted in a nice stiff wind blowing through our cabin. This meant us closing and re-closing the same windows over and over everyone couple of minutes and all night. We tried piling our backpacks in such a way so to block the wind, but this didn’t have the desired effect, either. We decided on a strategy of piling up our bags and closing the windows tight whenever necessary. Needless to say, we didn’t really sleep on our 13-hour, overnight journey to Jaisalmer.
Though, I think, we must have dozed off for an hour or two at some point in the night, because I remember looking at my phone at 2:30am and then at 6:30am, which came pretty fast. We shivered together in silence for the rest of the ride into Jaisalmer. Except for me occasionally mocking the bus’ horn. Patty remarked that she couldn’t believe I could have a sense of humour after a night like last night. Honestly, I couldn’t either.
It was a strange night on that bus. There was a lot of suffering in silence on both our parts. Neither of us vocalized it, but I think we took our suffering as an example of what people here experience on a daily basis. Looking out the window, there were fires burning with people huddled around them. Who knows what sorts of conditions these people went to bed in. Who knows the suffering, besides the cold, they endure on a daily basis. I felt like a pampered child who knew nothing of the world. Though the cold did not lessen with this realization, it altered my experience of it. How could I complain when this short experience is the life of so many? Of course, I could not. Taking the good with the bad is simply part of life. Something I would do well to remember.
Just before our arrival time, a young man knocked on our window to let us know that the Jaisalmer bus depot was the next stop. He began talking with us and he asked us where we were staying and if we had already paid. I knew it was fishy immediately, but I kept talking to him. Interestingly, he turned out to be friends with the owner of our hotel, Abu, and he actually called him to come pick us up. I was skeptical until I saw the name of our hotel on the white all-terrain van that came for us.
A two-minute drive later and we were at our hotel. Abu is an odd character. He's like a character out of a movie. He was on tablet the whole ride to the hotel and was using it as a phone and a camera. He seemed like a high roller. Come to think of it he looked and acted like a brown version of Hansel from the movie Zoolander; down to earth, quirky, and stylish. His English is pretty broken, and he explained that he hadn’t finished school or ever been to an English class and that he grew up very poor. He's quite a success story and has made a much better life for himself. He had learned English from taking people on camel safaris around Jaisalmer. That seems to be where his heart lies, and the hotel seems to be just a consequence of this. Oddly, he didn’t really try selling his safari tour to us. He had just come back from a tour, so perhaps he was tired. He talked mostly about himself and his visits to Bangkok and meeting “ladyboys”, he called them. He assured us no one could tell the difference. As I said, quite the character.
We waited about 10 minutes for our hotel room to be ready and then took our things there. I took a somewhat warm shower after running the water for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, hot water wouldn’t even come out of the shower head for Patty. A boy knocked on our door to give us two cups of masala chai. Nice touch, but the cups were kinda dirty. We drank them anyway. This is when we decided we were going to change hotels tomorrow night. We got changed (I put on my linen pants for the first time) and set out into the city.
The fort in Jaisalmer is absolutely magnificent. It sits upon a hill with sheer cliffs all around, except for the single entrance. It is very much middle-eastern inspired which makes sense since it is only about 100km away from the border of Pakistan. There is some very beautiful stonework. Most of the buildings inside the fort have been converted into hotels, shops, and homes, but the streets remain authentic with many people living inside the walls along with many stray dogs and cows. It is a truly remarkable place.
We headed straight for the hotel we intended on staying at, and were only really sidetracked once, when Patty spotted some chocolate croissants sitting in a window. It cost about $0.80 and was amazing. It was very obviously fresh and they did not go light on the chocolate. We will be back again tomorrow.
When we arrived at the hotel, called Paradise Hotel and situated within the fort, we asked about a room for tomorrow night. We were shown first their best room, which was large and had a spectacular view, but beyond our price range. We were then shown another room that was smaller, but with an equally stunning view. Again, a little bit too pricey. Finally, we were shown a room on the main floor with no view at all, but for a price we were willing to pay. The main things about this hotel are that it has wifi, a rooftop restaurant with a view of the fort and surrounding area, and its location.
We talked to the manager about also booking a safari through the hotel and he told us about theirs. It seemed like a good safari, except the price was a little high. At the end of the spiel, Patty asked about a discount on the room because we were also booking the safari. In response, the manager offered us the 1500 rupee room for 1300 rupees. Patty’s response? “1200 rupees and you’ve got a deal!” The manager turned to me and simply smiled. I said, “I know, she’s a hell of a negotiator”. He agreed with me, and then agreed to Patty’s price.
While we were at it, we also booked our bus trip to Udaipur. Yes, again we will be taking a bus, and again it will be at night. This time, though, we will be prepared with blankets! We will not freeze again!
We ate breakfast at the rooftop restaurant of the hotel and then hit the road. Our first stop was the post office to send home my suit. We started walking and then eventually picked up an auto-rickshaw. When we arrived at the post office, it turned out that we needed to get our parcel wrapped by someone from outside the post office. India strikes again! We inquired where we might do this and we were told to head to a market just down the street. Once there, we had no idea where to go. After asking three or four different people and wandering down the market aimlessly for 10 minutes or so, we were delivered by a kind gentleman to a small, family owned shop. The guys first price was an outrageous 200 rupees. We offered 150 rupees and then he accepted, except that he told us to come back in one hour. This, of course, was unacceptable to us. We were not going to leave my suit! So I offered 200 rupees to the guy to do it now. Ugh. That was a whole new level of bartering for us. Anyway, the guy agreed and began wrapping the stupid thing.
When he was done wrapping the parcel in the white cloth that all parcels in India absolutely MUST be wrapped in, we headed back to the post office. It seems that we arrived just as it was closing and we must have been their last customers. We didn’t have any trouble shipping the suit, although it did cost $22. India has some serious issues with shipping stuff.
After this, Patty was seriously exhausted and wanted to head back to our hotel to rest. We took another auto-rickshaw and in no time we were back in our hotel. Jaisalmer is a town of only about 60,000 people, so it doesn’t take long to get anywhere.
We rested for the next couple hours, drank some much needed water, and sorted out where we were going to eat dinner. We decided on an Italian restaurant suggested by the book. We are getting a little tired of Indian cuisine so it was time for a change of pace. The restaurant is just inside the fort’s walls and has a beautifully decorated inside seating area. Although it was strangely warm tonight, we decided to enjoy our dinner inside.
We ordered a coke, two soups, a lasagna, and a pasta dish. They were all quite good. It was a little on the pricey side for India – nearly $12. The different in the cost of food between Canada and India is absolutely insane. Just the two soups in Canada would probably have been more than $12! We chatted for a while and then decided to head back to our hotel for an early night. We will be changing hotels tomorrow and we want to do that as soon as possible.
On our way into our hotel, a manager called us over to fill out some papers. On the way into the office Patty didn't hear the manager’s warning about a mess on the floor and Patty ended up stepping in some kid’s puke. She was absolutely disgusted and I have to say her reaction was pretty hilarious, though I shouldn't laugh considering my experience in Hanoi. The manager’s reaction was simply, “It’s OK”. We've noticed that no one here in India really cares about the cleanliness of their feet or shoes.
And, I suppose, in India at least, caring might actually drive you mad.
Budget: 3500R/$70; Spent:3570R/$71
If there is a hell out there, today we experienced a small sliver of it. Except for us, instead of scorching heat, our own personal little hell on earth consisted of freezing cold. I am, of course, referring to our bus ride from Jaipur to Jaisalmer. I have never in my life been so cold for so long. It was almost absurd how cold we were. I said to Patty yesterday that either the bus will be super extravagant or it will be horrible. Unluckily for us, it was the latter.
The bus ride started out innocently enough. It was chilly, but nothing we couldn’t handle considering all the layers we were wearing. I was even mocking the horn of the bus, which sounded like one of Dan’s bird calls and we were both laughing hysterically trying to mimick him. Slowly but surely, though, as night set in, the chill turned to cold, which turned to frigid. What made it worse was that there were two windows to the outside that kept spontaneously opening. This, in combination with the sliding door to the rest of the bus spontaneously opening, resulted in a nice stiff wind blowing through our cabin. This meant us closing and re-closing the same windows over and over everyone couple of minutes and all night. We tried piling our backpacks in such a way so to block the wind, but this didn’t have the desired effect, either. We decided on a strategy of piling up our bags and closing the windows tight whenever necessary. Needless to say, we didn’t really sleep on our 13-hour, overnight journey to Jaisalmer.
Though, I think, we must have dozed off for an hour or two at some point in the night, because I remember looking at my phone at 2:30am and then at 6:30am, which came pretty fast. We shivered together in silence for the rest of the ride into Jaisalmer. Except for me occasionally mocking the bus’ horn. Patty remarked that she couldn’t believe I could have a sense of humour after a night like last night. Honestly, I couldn’t either.
It was a strange night on that bus. There was a lot of suffering in silence on both our parts. Neither of us vocalized it, but I think we took our suffering as an example of what people here experience on a daily basis. Looking out the window, there were fires burning with people huddled around them. Who knows what sorts of conditions these people went to bed in. Who knows the suffering, besides the cold, they endure on a daily basis. I felt like a pampered child who knew nothing of the world. Though the cold did not lessen with this realization, it altered my experience of it. How could I complain when this short experience is the life of so many? Of course, I could not. Taking the good with the bad is simply part of life. Something I would do well to remember.
Just before our arrival time, a young man knocked on our window to let us know that the Jaisalmer bus depot was the next stop. He began talking with us and he asked us where we were staying and if we had already paid. I knew it was fishy immediately, but I kept talking to him. Interestingly, he turned out to be friends with the owner of our hotel, Abu, and he actually called him to come pick us up. I was skeptical until I saw the name of our hotel on the white all-terrain van that came for us.
A two-minute drive later and we were at our hotel. Abu is an odd character. He's like a character out of a movie. He was on tablet the whole ride to the hotel and was using it as a phone and a camera. He seemed like a high roller. Come to think of it he looked and acted like a brown version of Hansel from the movie Zoolander; down to earth, quirky, and stylish. His English is pretty broken, and he explained that he hadn’t finished school or ever been to an English class and that he grew up very poor. He's quite a success story and has made a much better life for himself. He had learned English from taking people on camel safaris around Jaisalmer. That seems to be where his heart lies, and the hotel seems to be just a consequence of this. Oddly, he didn’t really try selling his safari tour to us. He had just come back from a tour, so perhaps he was tired. He talked mostly about himself and his visits to Bangkok and meeting “ladyboys”, he called them. He assured us no one could tell the difference. As I said, quite the character.
We waited about 10 minutes for our hotel room to be ready and then took our things there. I took a somewhat warm shower after running the water for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, hot water wouldn’t even come out of the shower head for Patty. A boy knocked on our door to give us two cups of masala chai. Nice touch, but the cups were kinda dirty. We drank them anyway. This is when we decided we were going to change hotels tomorrow night. We got changed (I put on my linen pants for the first time) and set out into the city.
The fort in Jaisalmer is absolutely magnificent. It sits upon a hill with sheer cliffs all around, except for the single entrance. It is very much middle-eastern inspired which makes sense since it is only about 100km away from the border of Pakistan. There is some very beautiful stonework. Most of the buildings inside the fort have been converted into hotels, shops, and homes, but the streets remain authentic with many people living inside the walls along with many stray dogs and cows. It is a truly remarkable place.
We headed straight for the hotel we intended on staying at, and were only really sidetracked once, when Patty spotted some chocolate croissants sitting in a window. It cost about $0.80 and was amazing. It was very obviously fresh and they did not go light on the chocolate. We will be back again tomorrow.
When we arrived at the hotel, called Paradise Hotel and situated within the fort, we asked about a room for tomorrow night. We were shown first their best room, which was large and had a spectacular view, but beyond our price range. We were then shown another room that was smaller, but with an equally stunning view. Again, a little bit too pricey. Finally, we were shown a room on the main floor with no view at all, but for a price we were willing to pay. The main things about this hotel are that it has wifi, a rooftop restaurant with a view of the fort and surrounding area, and its location.
We talked to the manager about also booking a safari through the hotel and he told us about theirs. It seemed like a good safari, except the price was a little high. At the end of the spiel, Patty asked about a discount on the room because we were also booking the safari. In response, the manager offered us the 1500 rupee room for 1300 rupees. Patty’s response? “1200 rupees and you’ve got a deal!” The manager turned to me and simply smiled. I said, “I know, she’s a hell of a negotiator”. He agreed with me, and then agreed to Patty’s price.
While we were at it, we also booked our bus trip to Udaipur. Yes, again we will be taking a bus, and again it will be at night. This time, though, we will be prepared with blankets! We will not freeze again!
We ate breakfast at the rooftop restaurant of the hotel and then hit the road. Our first stop was the post office to send home my suit. We started walking and then eventually picked up an auto-rickshaw. When we arrived at the post office, it turned out that we needed to get our parcel wrapped by someone from outside the post office. India strikes again! We inquired where we might do this and we were told to head to a market just down the street. Once there, we had no idea where to go. After asking three or four different people and wandering down the market aimlessly for 10 minutes or so, we were delivered by a kind gentleman to a small, family owned shop. The guys first price was an outrageous 200 rupees. We offered 150 rupees and then he accepted, except that he told us to come back in one hour. This, of course, was unacceptable to us. We were not going to leave my suit! So I offered 200 rupees to the guy to do it now. Ugh. That was a whole new level of bartering for us. Anyway, the guy agreed and began wrapping the stupid thing.
When he was done wrapping the parcel in the white cloth that all parcels in India absolutely MUST be wrapped in, we headed back to the post office. It seems that we arrived just as it was closing and we must have been their last customers. We didn’t have any trouble shipping the suit, although it did cost $22. India has some serious issues with shipping stuff.
After this, Patty was seriously exhausted and wanted to head back to our hotel to rest. We took another auto-rickshaw and in no time we were back in our hotel. Jaisalmer is a town of only about 60,000 people, so it doesn’t take long to get anywhere.
We rested for the next couple hours, drank some much needed water, and sorted out where we were going to eat dinner. We decided on an Italian restaurant suggested by the book. We are getting a little tired of Indian cuisine so it was time for a change of pace. The restaurant is just inside the fort’s walls and has a beautifully decorated inside seating area. Although it was strangely warm tonight, we decided to enjoy our dinner inside.
We ordered a coke, two soups, a lasagna, and a pasta dish. They were all quite good. It was a little on the pricey side for India – nearly $12. The different in the cost of food between Canada and India is absolutely insane. Just the two soups in Canada would probably have been more than $12! We chatted for a while and then decided to head back to our hotel for an early night. We will be changing hotels tomorrow and we want to do that as soon as possible.
On our way into our hotel, a manager called us over to fill out some papers. On the way into the office Patty didn't hear the manager’s warning about a mess on the floor and Patty ended up stepping in some kid’s puke. She was absolutely disgusted and I have to say her reaction was pretty hilarious, though I shouldn't laugh considering my experience in Hanoi. The manager’s reaction was simply, “It’s OK”. We've noticed that no one here in India really cares about the cleanliness of their feet or shoes.
And, I suppose, in India at least, caring might actually drive you mad.
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