Notes from a Dug - Jaipur

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NOTE - this entry should be read before the Jaipur to Pushkar post!!



Notes From A Dug - Jaipur

Jaipur is our introduction to Rajasthan. First stop is not on our itinerary. Five women, hands up for great shopping at a clothing store known as Fab India. Dug is along for the ride. "Tragically/regrettably", our local guide phones us from gridlock somewhere, "the national Congress party is holding a poo-bah meeting in that part of the city and all roads are closed in the vicinity." We won't see our guide until morning and take advantage of the free time to explore the hotel, log on to the Internet, and yak with each other. This is an older, sorta stately hotel, a potential remnant from the British Raj. Only three stories high, you cannot access floors from one another unless you have a room key for that floor. All of us finish what we are doing and retire. Terry is still in the "Business Centre" keyboarding the last of her emails. Thinking nothing of it, Doug fa-la-la's around the room and Terry shows up two hours later. Turns out she was being Cat-Woman, Spider-Girl and street acrobat. Having forgotten her key in our room, she couldn't take the elevator to our floor, couldn't remember our room number and decided to take the exit stairs to our floor. Unfortunately/Regrettably, once in the stairwell, she couldn't get out until she reached the main floor exit which dumped her in a back alley, in the darkness, in a strange city, in a state of high anxiety. Trying to find her way back to the main entrance involved picking her way through back alley garbage, hurdling foreign obstacles and, after climbing a ramshackle security fence, Terry was able to saunter her dishevelled body past hotel security and into the front lobby. Good thing she is a white girl or she wouldn't have made it past security. However, she still needed a key to our room. Unfortunately/Regrettably she found out she was registered in the room occupied by her sister and Deb, which was on a floor different from ours, i.e. she couldn't get to our floor. Exasperated, she leapt over the reception desk and within seconds her room allocation was discovered. Just one more adventure in the land of the lotus and the realm of Shiva, the Destroyer.



The next morning Shantar, our guide, welcomes us to the day with an elephant ride up a significant, quarter-mile, cobblestone rise to the Amber Palace. This is a ride on the bucket list of a few people. One ninety year old couple waited in the uphill climbing queue for 20 minutes until they were finally able to be lifted into the two person, low-slung, wagon-type enclosure on top of the elephant. Unfortunately/Regrettably there was no back support. Ninety year old bodies, with minimal abdominal strength, soon find themselves lying flat on the back of an elephant looking at the brilliant blue sky floating by. Unfortunately/Regrettably their ninety year old eyes could have done this from the chaise lounge of their hotel. But, in this case, much of the joy in reaching the destination can be found in each step of the journey. Good on them for taking the first step.



Our next stop was a visit to the world's only stone observatory. Forget whatever image you have in your mind about observatories. This one was all about astrological sign, symbols and calculating your place in the firmament. As much as our guide tried to explain the intricacies, it was Lisa, our seer, who absorbed it all and left with a sense if awe.



From here, our itinerary was to take us to the City Palace. Five Women look at each other and, through their shared, divine consciousness a decision is made. We are going shopping. First to a jewelry shop, then to a textile factory, then to the Holy Grail known as Fab India. Dug waits outside at the jewelry shop, inside the van at the textile factory and beside a dressing room at Fab India. Somehow he leaves Fab India with a medium length Kurti that has everyone's approval. He feels his estrogen levels rise.



The day ends with dinner at a local restaurant where the food is done well and the service is mainly absent. Trying to get the bill, Lisa eventually stands up beside the table in solitary silence hoping to be noticed. Treated like an Indian Statue of Liberty, she is passed by as the service staff view her as just another obstacle in their way to a more enlightened state. When all of us stand and make moves to leave, the miracle of the bill appears in a puff of enlightenment.



We return to the hotel where, once again, we are saluted like the colonial representatives that we are. Wash time, nap time and pack time for our journey to Pushkar tomorrow.

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