Jaipur

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Our hostel here is really nice, and in a more residentialarea of town. It’s a longer walk to mostof the tourist sights, but it’s a nice neighborhood. We started our day with a LONG walk to get tothe Pink City. It’s the old town andthey painted the whole thing pink at some point in history as a welcome to aKing that was visiting(I obviously didn’t do a lot of studying up on Jaipurbefore arriving). We walked around thecity and saw the Hawa Mahal- still not sure what it is, but it’s the bigtourist sight in town. It’s a 5 story<br style="color:� font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;" />pink building. Other than that, notsure. While we were walking around theshops, a man and little boy started harassing us and being very rude. We finally ducked into a shop and waited forthem to leave. Some of the men here arereally rude and stare at us in an evil way. I can handle the typical gawking men that whistle and say nasty thingsto me, but these men are looking at us in a different way. A lot of them really seem to dislike us. We were flipped off and called mean namesduring the day too. Just a more hostile<br style="color:� font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;" />environment than I have ever encountered while traveling. After some shopping, we took a tuktuk up tothe Amber fort entrance and planned to ride an elephant the rest of the wayup. Apparently, the elephants only arearound in the morning and early evening, so we had to hang out around theentrance for 2 hours to wait for the ride. During our time waiting, we sat around in a garden at the entrance. A lot of other tourists were there, but all Indians. We are shocked that we are in the goldentriangle and not seeing any other foreign tourists, but maybe we are just thereat different times. Again, we were the<br style="color:� font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;" />zoo animals. We sat in the shade behinda fountain, but people found us. At onepoint we had a group of probably 15 20something boys standing about 3 feet infront of and around us just staring. It’sso unbelievable to us that they act like that, so we got up and left. Finally it was time for the elephants to comeout and that was so much fun. I got topet one, and then we climbed on and headed up to the fort. It was really a pretty bumpy ride, and I keptthinking we were going to fall off, but it was fun. We stopped at a pottery shop on the way back<br style="color:� font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;" />to town and bought some of jaipur’s famous blue pottery. It was very pretty, but quite pricy. When we were headed back to the hotel, thetuktuk driver started asking us about the economy in the US and saying that hedoesn’t believe that it is getting bad there. When we said it was down, he kind of rudely said that he didn’t believeit. He seemed a little hostile so I wasglad to get out. The whole day seemed tobe filled with a lot of hostility and we really felt pretty threatened. We ended up spending the rest of the eveningin the security of our hostel. Luckily,<br style="color:� font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;" />today was much better. We headed to theold city in search of a henna artist because I was dying to get it done. After quite a lot of haggling, we both endedup getting some. I got both hands andarms and I just love it! Then we didsome more shopping, had lunch and took a walk around our neighborhood. We didn’t run in to any rude people today, andthe staring was really kept to a minimum. I actually can handle the celebrity type staring(although it isincredibly annoying), but the hostile stares make me feel reallyuncomfortable. It was just a much betterday all around. Oh well, one bad day outof the whole trip isn’t too bad. Now weare just waiting for the night train back to Delhi. Tomorrow we are doing a short little walkaround the sights of Old Delhi before heading to the airport to go home. I can’t believe it’s already over, but Ireally miss all of my boys(Andrew, the dogs and cat-for anyone who maymisunderstand that) and can’t wait to see them!**Also saw a snake charmer, and I forgot a gross yet funny story from last night. I was sitting in the courtyard(grass) and there were probably 7 other people around. A woman that I think lives here or works here or something walked through wearing a sari. Apparently she needed to pee, so instead of heading for the bathroom, she just stopped and peed standing there and then walked away. She wasn't in the corner or anything, just peed in the lawn with people around and walked away. Weird!

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