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India was at the top of my list of where I wanted to travel outside of Japan. So...I finally made it. Myself and 6 friends took on a small part of India (Rajasthan) for about 2 weeks in March. India is huge....2 weeks doesn't even come close to the amount of time you'd need to spend there to see and experience it all.
We arrived in Delhi around 3am and headed out early the next day to start the journey. We decided to hire our own personal van and driver because it saved time and money in the long run. The downside to this was that these companies have "friends" all over the touristy cities. That means that they always want to take you to certain restuarants, hotels, or shops where they will get commission. Our driver, Pintu, was really cool. Of course he tried his best to get as much money out of us, but after he got over his pouting when we refused, he apologized for any bad feelings between us. He'd always say to us when we turned down his offers, "As you like. I am not feeling." And then he would continue dancing and singing along to
the hindi punjabi pop music that he loved to crank up everyday.
One night, he took us to a Bollywood movie, "Bewafaa," which was really fun. Bollywood movies are 3 hours long so I expected to be really bored. I was mistaken. It was so dramatic that it was easy to follow (much like a soap opera with singing and dancing.) And the best part was that every couple minutes or so, they would say a line or two in English instead of Hindi. Also, Bollywood movies are very clean. There is no kissing, however, there is a whole lot of almost kissing. And at the end, there was a nice moral lesson taught to us by the main guy, Raja, who spoke directly to the audience.
We started out in Agra and saw the Taj Mahal. Very surreal. We went to Jaipur, the pink city. All the buildings are painted pink as a gift to a prince who visted some time ago. Jaipur is crazy. Traffic jams there consist of cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes, people, bikes, cows, elephants, stray dogs, and rickshaws. And cows rule. Man, there are cows everywhere! They just lie in the middle of a busy
what to eat...
veg or non-veg? street and everyone goes around them. No big deal. Jaipur is the shopping city. There is so much stuff to buy...stuff you never knew you wanted until you saw it everywhere. And those salesmen are pushy! One guy was a bit over the edge. We did buy something from his shop, but it wasn't enough for him! Oh no, he blocked our way out, holding up T-shirts and screaming, "look at this t-shirt! foreigners love t-shirts!!" It would be funny if he didn't freak us out so much. You have to bargain in India, so sometimes I'd point out a stain or something. They would just say, "oh, that will come right off when you wash it." One man said to us, "what? theres no stain here" when it was right there in front of our faces. And my favorite was the grape cart man who was calling, "delicious grapes!" But when we checked it out, all he had was one small bunch of rotting grapes surrounded by flies. yum yum.
We also went to Udaipur, which was my favorite city. It was so laid back with rooftop restaurants all over. There was also a festival there called Holi. To
celebrate Holi, people buy these colored powders and throw them at you after they drench you with water. The result is a permanant sort of dye that stains your skin and hair for weeks. I didn't get into that too much because I read that sometimes people will mix acids into the water. Yeah.
Everything was really great in India, except that Jenn had her purse stolen in Pizza Hut. After we realized that it had happened, we snapped into gung ho mode and all ran to do the necessary things. Jenn and Crack rushed off to the police station, Phil, Molly and I went to make some phone calls, and Andy and Hartley ran to get a taxi to go back to the hotel...they hailed the first thing they saw, which happened to be a rickshaw...but not an electric one...a man-pedal powered one. So they jumped on with a sense of urgency as it slowly came to a starting roll and leisurely started to the hotel. They could have made it faster on foot. In hindsight, it was pretty funny.
I had such a great time in India and I cannot wait to go back and check out the
southern part of the country...hey, my visa is still good for another 2 months!
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