DAY 9 - TORDI GARH

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As usual, we woke up, got packed, and went down for breakfast in the hotel before leaving for our bus to Tordi Garh. We had a decent breakfast buffet with corn flakes, eggs, yogurt, toast, juice and coffee. At about 7:30, we all piled into the same mini-bus from the day before and headed to the bus stand from which we’d take the bus to a town near Jaipur, then jeeps from there to Tordi Garh. The first bus turned out to be a rather old bus, without air conditioning, but we mostly only shared it with another tour group and a few local passengers. After negotiating the chaotic streets of Agra, we hit the major toll highway. This was probably one of the better highways in India, but it was still rather bumpy and full of cars, trucks, motorcycles and bikes, going 3 to 5 across often. After about 2 ½ hours, we stopped at a “Midway” stop to use the restrooms and buy drinks and snacks for the rest of the trip. When we reached our transfer point, it turned out we were taking a tourist bus instead of jeeps, and without the other tour group. This bus was quite modern, with air conditioning and all. I originally thought we were taking jeeps (according to the trip notes) and would go from some large town near Tordi Garh. It turned out that not only were we taking this bus, but that we went through Jaipur to get to Tordi Garh. I guess the roads were supposed to be better that way, but you could have fooled me. Between the nasty narrow roads, and the chaotic traffic in every town, especially Jaipur, it was a real nightmare. Then, we reached the smaller, one-lane, bumpy road to Tordi Garh and it brought back memories of my cave tour in Belize on the road to Hell! We were so relieved to reach Tordi Garh that we hardly noticed how bad and narrow its roads were. Now I understand why they usually, or used to, use Jeeps!

When we reached our hotel, the Tordi Palace, we both decided it was worth the trip. This place is awesome! Like an old Indian palace, in the midst of renovations, but still awesome. Our room is 401, but it’s actually on the second floor! The room has the normal super wide, but not so long bed, with very cool palace like furnishings, and air-conditioning. The only down side is that the bathroom has another of those open showers, without a partition or even a curtain. Oh well, the rest of the room makes up for it. After freshening up, we all met in a dining room for coffe, tea, and a light snack. By this time it was 4pm. We were supposed to meet with our guide at 6pm, so we went for a walk around town. Tordi Garh is a very small, but quaint sort of town, with a real Indian flavor, unlike the big cities we’d been in up to now. All the kids, and a lot of the adults said hi to us, and many of the kids wanted my wife to take “one photo”, then freak out when they saw their photo on the camera.

At 6pm, we talk a walk with our guide to explain some of the history and culture of the town. He pointed out the three main temples in the town and explained about the drawings on newlywed homes, where they’d use a heart with their names and often some scene or other. He also explained about the public toilets built by the state for those that were too poor to have toilets in their homes… a situation India is trying hard to rectify. We saw the town’s Post Office where we could send a postcard, postmarked Tordi Gahr, men sitting together playing cards, and old ladies and children playing a game sort of like checkers, but more complicated. By the time we’d made the loop of the town, it was 7:30 and time for our dinner. All the hotel staff are very friendly and all, but the only menu they had was one for drinks, mostly alcoholic, so we all served ourselves from a buffet. It included their pita-type bread, some very tasty long-grained rice, and three types of sauces or stews; one with just veggies, one marsala type with tofu, and one spicy one with chicken. At the end of the dinner, they brought us each a small square of sweetbread or semolina. All in all quite tasty. After dinner, since the only soft drinks they had were small bottles, I took a somewhat scary walk down into the town to buy a larger bottle of Coke. The streets were wet and dark, but I found a place and bought my big Coke for 40 Rupees. On the way back, I missed my turn and after a couple blocks, some guy came to me telling me something and pointed back the way I came. Apparently, he knew I’d missed my turn and was telling me to go back and take the next left. When I got back to the room, I worked on my blog, so that in Jaipur, our next stop, when we have Wifi, I could get up to date. No, we didn’t have internet here. We turned in while some of the folks sat around drinking and chatting. My wife complained about the extremely loud music coming from the town, but without my hearing aids I couldn’t hear it.

Tomorrow we travel by minibus to the town of Jaipur for a couple of days more of fun. Sorry for the continued delay in posting, but long hot days and no WiFi in Tordi Garh…

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