Friday the 13th we went exploring in some urban villages. The first was Sultan Garhi, an abandoned village where we got to climb around the ruins and go into the underground durga, the oldest tomb in Delhi (from the 1100s). It was pretty neat.
In the afternoon, we attended a cooking class, which was fun, but I didn't stay for the whole thing because (as usual) we started late, and I had a train to catch. My roommate Rachel, Paula, Theresa, and my first roommate Marie (who's in a homestay) decided to go to Jaipur for the weekend. Our train was scheduled to leave at 5:40 p.m., and I had originally been planning on skipping the cooking class since it would be the beginning of rush hour when I was trying to get out of there, and I didn't want to cut it that close. But I was guilted into going because it was so expensive to hire this woman to cook for us, and I had wanted to go back in January when it was originally scheduled.
Anyway, I came away from the cooking class with some delicious recipes that I will certainly be trying out when I get bak to the States. But Rachel, Paula and I had to hustle to catch our train, even though we left the cooking class early. Cate had kindly told us that one of the taxis that brought us to the cooking school would take us to the train station, but when we walked outside, the taxi driver was nowhere in sight. Just an empty taxi sitting next to the building. Cate got on the phone and yelled at him, and then we see him jump out of the other taxi across the street, shoeless and sleepy-eyed and looking none too happy.
As I predicted, traffic was horrible. Our taxi driver was actually rushing, though, which doesn't seem to happen much in India. If people are late, they're late, but we didn't know when the next train to Jaipur was and didn't want to waste the tickets we already had. When it got to be 5:35 p.m. and we were passing Old Delhi railway station - not New Delhi, where we should have already been by then - I was pretty much giving up hope of catching the train. (Theresa and Marie were already at the train station because they had skipped the cooking class, and they said the train was on time.) But our taxi driver kept rushing as much as he could, and we finally see signs for New Delhi Station, even though it's after 5:40. At the last red light before the entrance to the station, we had an ironic moment. All three of us were freaking out thinking we were going to miss our train and pissed off that we were sitting at yet another red light, but we looked up and saw that someone had stencil-painted the word "RELAX" on the red light that was currently illuminated. It's funny in hindsight, but I don't think any of us appreciated it at the time.
We finally pull up to the front of the station, thank our taxi driver, and jump out practically before the car stopped moving. We literally run through the train station trying to figure out where our platform is (which is no easy task, since it's a big station, most of the signes are in Hindi, and it doesn't seem to be laid out according to what I would call common sense). So we are running through the station with all our stuff, Darjeeling Limited - style (watch that movie if you haven't seen it!), find our train (which hasn't left even though it's 6:00 at this point), and jump on the first car we see. Which is not ours, and it's VERY crowded, but a kind old gentlemen went up and down the car telling people to squish so that we each had a seat, just not all together. The train started moving within seconds of us getting on, so we were quite lucky to make it. We got off at the next station to try to find out proper place, which should have been two cars away from where we were, according to the multiple people we asked. But the train started moving again, and one of the conductor/ticket collectors told us to just get on the car we were next to, which happened to be the first car of the sleeper class section, which was good. The train guy told us he'd take us to our seats, after we went through the whole hassle of explaining to them that we bought tickets online but didn't have the print-out of the confirmation because the computers and printers at the residence were broken. They finally found our names on the list, and the guy took us to our seats. Which was approximately eight cars away from where we were. It was far. And the farther back we went, the more crowded it became, since apparently commuters are allowed to cram into sleeper class on that train. The train guy kindly made four of the guys crowded into our compartment get up so that the three of us could sit, joining the two girls already there. We were still sharing our two benches with four or five other men, plus all the guys standing right next to us staring and listening in on our conversations (which they may or may not have understood).
Sleeper class, the cheapest way to travel long distances in India, is an interesting experience. The intense crowding was interesting, as was the fact that we had some hilarious conversations with people that barely spoke English. Several of them didn't even speak Hindi, only Punjabi, so that was even funnier. One of the girls had her book called "Hindi from Day One" with her, and the men who were near us were studying it carefully. It was rather comical.
I was sitting by a window, thankfully, bars and all, but at least it provided me with some much-needed fresh air. That many people crammed together gets smelly, regardless of whether you showered that day. A mouse ran over my foot, which was cute after I wasn't startled anymore, but not so cute when you stop and think about it. I didn't see any cockroaches, but I was trying not to look and it was too crowded anyway. After about two hours, most of the commuters were gone and we had a reasonable amount of breathing space.
We got into Jaipur around 12:30 a.m., later than expected (which we should have expected) and got in an auto to go to the guest house where I had booked us rooms earlier that day. (Thank goodness for kind people who will allow check-ins in the middle of the night!) The autorickshaws in Jaipur are different from Delhi; they're much bigger, they're black instead of yellow and green, and they're generally in much better condition. I realized, though, that they run on diesel fuel, whereas all the ones in Delhi are required to run on compressed natural gas, which is probably why they're so different.
The guest house was adorable and brightly colored and much nicer than what I expected rs. 300 per room per night would get us. It's called Vinayak Guest House, and the family that runs it treats all of the guests like family. It was awesome. When we got through the whole process of digging out our passports and visas and filling out the guest register and everything, the man I'm guessing is the owner of the place told us that they served breakfast in the guest house for good prices. It's 1:15 a.m. at this point, so I ask him what time breakfast is, thinking that if it's at seven like back in Neeti Bagh, we are not getting up. His reply was so sweet; he said,"It doesn't matter...nine o'clock, ten o'clock, we can do any time. You sleep first. Then we worry about breakfast."
We didn't end up eating breakfast in the guest house because we were eager to get out and explore. So we went to the edge of the Old City, which is where Jaipur got the nickname of the Pink City, though it's actually terra cotta, not pink. We wandered around for a while, at lunch in this tiny hole-in-the-wall place shown to us by a friendly Rajasthani art student who clearly got commission from bringing us there, and then set off to find some touristy things to do. We went to the Hawa Mahal (Wind Palace) and then to City Palace. The City Palace is huge and it's essentially a city within a city, but we couldn't figure out how to get to most of it. After a while, we realized that the door that was mostly closed and guarded by three police officers was not normally closed. Turns out that Salman Khan, a famous Bollywood star, was filming a movie there that day! I heard later that they did a ridiculous amount of damage to the buildings during the filming and were completely disrespectful of the fact that they were in a famous, historical place of high interest to tourists. But anyway. We were milling around trying to see if there was some way we could get into the part of the palace where they were filming, and this random guy comes up and starts talking to us (which happens most places we go). But he told me that I looked like Katrina Kaif, a famous Bollywood actress, and didn't quite believe me when I said I wasn't...I thought he was joking since I think I look like the whitest person in India, but then he asked if any of us had a pen. We said no, and he walked away. Moments later, a large Indian family asked us all to pose with them for a family photo, which we did because they were nice about it and had cute little kids. As soon as they left, the guy came back with a pen and business card in hand, and asked for my autograph! So I signed my name as Katrina Kaif, and he walked away a happy little Indian man. I was thoroughly entertained, and for the rest of the weekend, I introduced myself as Katrina to any shopkeeper or random passerby who inquired. I think it's a good strategy to use from now on.
One of the greatest things about Jaipur was the fact that we convinced every place we went to give us the Indian prices for tickets! This is a major accomplishment, because the difference is usually something along the lines of rs. 10 for Indian visitors, rs. 120-200 for foreign visitors. Because we had i.d. cards with our Delhi address on them and that identified us as students, we succeeded in arguing that we were Indian visitors. One thing that IES did right: give us i.d. cards that say we live and study in Delhi.
After City Palace we went to this large observatory full of crazy structures that one of the kings decided Jaipur absolutely needed. If you have the money, why not built a park with crazy, giant astronomy and astrology tools? That was really fun, and we also lounged around in the actual green grass for a while, which was nice. We were too cheap to pay the couple hundred rupees for a guide, so we didn't know exactly what all the crazy stuff was for, but the signs told us the basics. I think we got the general idea.
After that, we just walked, did some shopping, ate dinner, and did some more shopping. We saw at least three different wedding parades in the streets, which was great fun. It's definitely the start of shaadi season in India...Valentine's Day was apparently a very auspicious day for a wedding (Indians seem to love the word "auspicious" for some reason), and every day since then I've seen or heard at least one wedding. It's utter madness, but they certainly know how to party for these weddings. If you have money, your wedding parade includes camels and elephants. Which is nuts.
On Sunday we ate a delicious breakfast at the guest house and one of the guys who worked there called a taxi to take us up to the Amber Fort, which was too far away to go by rickshaw. The taxi driver was interesting. A terrible taxi driver because he kept taking us to places we didn't want to go, and a kind of sketchy human being since he told us he has two girlfriends in addition to his wife, but he knew the city well and eventually got us where we wanted to go. We stopped by the Water Palace on the way to the Amber Fort, but sadly had to look at it from land. It's very pretty, all nestled in the middle of the water in between the hills. I want a house like that some day. :) The Amber Fort is up in the hills on the outskirt of the current city of Jaipur, and it's amazing. Full of tourists, but those places usually are. They had elephant rides up the hill to the fort, but we didn't do it because they didn't look like they treated the elephants nicely and we didn't want to encourage that kind of behavior.
The Amber Fort is gigantic and pretty and has all kinds of passageways and stairwells and niches to explore. The Hall of Mirrors was literally this series of chambers completely covered in shiny things, which was really cool. We also stumbled across the ruins of an ancient Cafe Coffee Day...it was funny seeing them convert part of the fort into a coffee shop. And kind of strange. We were happy to have cold, yummy caffeinated beverages, but an India-wide chain cafe was sort of out-of-place. Oh well. Smart move on their part; I'm sure they rake in tons of money.
Some more shopping and back to the guest house to collect our things, then taxi'd to the train station, where we ate scrumptious street food. (Don't tell. I eat the street food, and it's spectacular. Bread omelettes and momos are two of my favorites.) We were plenty early for our train this time, and we had no trouble finding our seats. The journey back was completely different from the way there; sleeper class was fully booked when we bought our tickets, so we were in second chair AC. Meaning there was, yes, an actual chair for each person, and the increase in ticket price apparently went entirely towards food, since we got fed at least three times. Decent enough for train food, though certainly not the best food I've eaten here. We got home to Neeti Bagh - on time! - and as we were making the last turn to come to our part of the neighborhood, we saw a house all lit up and music playing...it was a shaadi! So it's shaadi season in Delhi as well as Jaipur. We considered crashing the party, but given the circumstances (we were dirty, had all of our luggage, and had to get up for class the next day), we decided against it. If we looked pretty, they probably would have let us in. :)
Classes were pretty normal during the last week: Ramjas classes starting late and finishing late, cancelled on Thursday because the teachers were on strike, IES classes also typically ending late...the usual. Hindi class is surprisingly fun because our teacher allows us to go off on 20-minute tangents to ask her about things we actually need to know to use in everyday conversation. We also had a lengthy discussion of different fruits the other day...
Nothing like a 22-hour train ride for catching up on blogging. As soon as I find internet, I can post this and I'll be up-to-date!
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