Belly without the Delhi

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Today has been crazy, I could literally fall asleep on this keyboard in Jaipur station.. We woke at 5 to catch a freeezing rickshaw ride to Agra Fort station. We arrived at 10 to 6 and saw that it had been delayed an hour till 7.15 - bad start to the day. I then realised I couldnt find my Indian phone and I was 100% sure I'd put it in my pocket when we left the hotel - even worse start to the day. I decided (as the lateness had now been updated to 8.15..) that i would grab a rickshaw back to the hotel to quickly check the room - it wasnt there. I can only think i hadnt put it in a zip pocket and it'd been nabbed or just slipped out - so anyway back to only english number if you want to contact me. The station floor was covered in sleeping bodies - a very strange and sad sight to see so many homeless people with literally just paper thin blankets and a station floor for sleep. We waited out the time with the German girls who were on the same train again although (I'm guessing because it was built by the British) the train was announced to be now running 3 hours late. It turned up finally at 9.20 after we'd arrived at 5.50... Boys darted accross the tracks literally scarily close to the approaching train. We were in 2AC which is air conditioned carriage with 4 bunks per compartment which can double as seats in the day time. I was very glad we were in this class after seeing the basic seat class - rammed full and this was a 5 hour trip. The carriage was a bit shabby but comfortable enough and it was nice to get a bit of a lie down whilst watching Northern India fly by. The terrain began changing from the green flat fields to dry scrubland with rocky hills and camels meandering about.

At about half past 2 we arrived at Jaipur, a pretty nice clean station compared to Delhi and Agra. We only had the day time before our train onto Ajmer in the evening at 8.30pm so we left our bags in the station cloakroom for 10R a peice and had absolutely no trouble finding an autorickshaw driver who wanted to take us on a quick breeze round the sights - including waiting time. We managed to get it down to 600 between us for the whole day. First off we drove up to Amber Fort - funnily enough an amber coloured fort on a huge rocky hill about Jaipur. On the way we passed through Old Jaipur (the area within the old city walls) where every building was painted a pinky/brown colour (hence the nickname - pink city). Pretty cool, it was first painted pink as this is the colour of hospitality for a visit of the then Prince of Wales. Even today people are fined 5000R for not painting their property the right colour! We went up the mountain road with the fort towering high above us - great defence for Jaipur. On the way we had stopped at an Indian Pizza Hut - full of half westerners and half middle class indians. The staff were funnily well drilled on providing the best service. Pizza Hut here seemed to be a bit more upmarket than the one at home! Amber Fort provided us with some very steep climbs to reach and get around the place - a good work out and was all in all pretty impressive! After amber we headed back down to the city, stopping next to the road where there was a view of the lake palace, pretty awesome just stuck in the middle not even on an island - similar to the one we'll see in Udaipur I suppose! Me and Katie bought the worlds biggest puppadoms - about on par with the size of an XL pizza at home. The driver then tried to take us to 'crafts museums where children worked but you didnt have to buy' - sure and we get pressured to and you receive a fat commision. So we insisted No even though it took him a while to give up the ghost!

We then saw the Hawa Mahal - a beautiful pink honeycombed 5 storey building which the maharaja built for the ladies to be able to watch street life. The driver then suggested the monkey temple - which true to its name is where many monkeys gather at dusk. It's real name is the temple of the sun gods and is a Hindu Temple - it was way up on the top of a steep climb up another rocky hill - which knackered us even more! We bought some peanuts to give to the monkeys and they came up and took them out of katies hand - very funny and theyre scarily like little people! When I tried a massive one came and grabbed the whole bag - cheeky. On the way up we encountered a snake charmer who played his tune and sure enough out popped the cobra! He gestured to me to come over and have a go which I did and charmed it out of its basket. The charmer then instantly demanded 500R for the good picture - not a chance mate and I had no change to give him something far smaller so we made a quick retreat and carried on up the hill. The views from the temple were STUNNING! you could see for miles over the whole of Jaipur and also get a great view of Amber to our right. We were lucky enough to catch it at sunset and it was the most amazingly coloured sunset I'd seen. Deep oranges and reds - very impressive. Street noise carried up to the temple and you could hear horns and children shouting and playing. We then headed back down - hastily avoiding mr snake charmer again and having to refuse to give any money to many little beggars - it had become so overwhelming that everyone we'd met that day just wanted our money. We understood that they needed it and lived in horrible poverty but being asked every two seconds was so stressful and we walked back down after a verrry long day feeling completely drained. The driver took us back to the station where we picked up our bags and got on the internet, waiting for our train. I felt pretty down and so did Katie as yet again the station was beginning to get packed with bodies and blankets.

I'm no longer in Jaipur station - obviously. The train was luckily on time and this time we were in 3AC - the same as 2AC although with 3 bunks on each side of the compartment. Ours was full with a retired couple and another indian man. They were all speaking very fast and as they had bunks down into chairs we all had to squeeze in and sit together in very close proximity. They all turned out to be very nice though and asked us many questions about home and England in general, we asked the same back! They were amazed at our mp3 players and spent a while looking through pics of friends and family to get a feel of what our life at home was like! The other man was very friendly altho seemed slightly worried that we'd be arriving into Ajmer at 11.30pm with no room to go to... this didnt help to calm our already slight worries and the journey seemed to take an age to go by - we were so tired! (We'd tried to book hotels on the phone but they refused and said turn up). The man offered us his business card and said we should come visit his store if we were ever in Aurangabad! A lady passed round indian sweets which I took so as not to be rude. They were quite doughy and very sweet! When we finally arrived in Ajmer we wished them all goodbye and tried to exit the station but were stopped for the first time by a man asking for our tickets - we couldnt find it and a whole fuss was kicked up with people speaking very quickly in Rajasthani or Hindi - just what we needed when we just wanted to sleep, it nearly pushed us over the edge. I tried to stay calm and tell them just to check the passenger list and it turned out we were fine to carry on even though many Indian people were searching our carriage - felt pretty bad!

We ventured outside and said to the first rickshaw driver just to find us a room which he did. It was grimey and very depressing (and an expensive 600) although we were just happy to have a bed and fell asleep instantly. I had a very bad nights sleep waking up freezing cold and feeling sick. I ended up being sick twice in the morning as well as having the runs... The famous delhi belly had finally caught up with me and I felt awful, depressed and homesick! I'm guessing it must have been the sweets or maybe the poppadum, Katie wasnt feeling too great either but we forced ourselves to get up and check out of that terrible room, feeling very dehydrated, dizzy and just generally awful. We decided to skip big city Ajmer and found a taxi that would take us to the much quieter Pushkar - a sacred Hindu town 12 km away, pretty traveller friendly and hopefully a great break from the big city and somewhere we could kick back and recover. We travelled over a mountain and down into Puskar , checked into lonely planet recommended Diamond Hotel (also very cheap). It had a nice courtyard with potted plants and a cool rooftop restaurant. The sun was much hotter here. I drank loooads of water, ate a banana and had some Diarolite before falling off to sleep for half the afternoon and started feeling better. We've ventured out of the hotel and down to an internet cafe - think we're just going to take it easy for a little bit as maybe the stress of moving too quick wasnt helping how we were feeling! India is not a great place to be when you're feeling rough! I'll upload some pics another time...

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Photos

Amber Fort
Amazing place!

Comments

[Alex]

Sucks to be you!
It's nice to read how you are, and that you obviously miss everyone already. You should just watch family guy on your mp3 player and tell katie to laugh when u say, and imagine that katie is me and you'll feel like I'm there! P.s I finished the oc s1 but can't find series 2 anywhere! Get get well soon bro

[teague]

borrrrinnggggggg seriously i would rather eat the money ur spending!! hurry up and get ur ass back here so we can go fishin for whales