Holes in My Soles � Part II � India: Jodpur - Jaisalmer - Agra

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Part Two
India: Jodpur – Jaisalmer – Agra

I write this having arrived in Jodpur in the early hours of the morning, following a 6 hour Sleeper Bus ride – obviously ironically named as the three of us managed no sleep at all. This was mostly because the ride couldn’t have been much bumpier if we’d been riding an epileptic donkey but also because of the driver’s 10 year old son. Karun, as we learned he was named, had left school and was sure to make a career of it. Despite his young age he had adopted the self-appointed rank of ‘bus conductor’, which seemingly involves shouting continuously for most of the journey and trying to run a sideline business by flogging RS50 aftershave to his passengers (his sales technique involves spraying unsuspecting tourists in the eyes and claiming ‘’it smell very very handsome’’). His primary duty for our journey however, was to demand money from us (but oddly not from any locals) to cover the ‘’baggage handling’’ fee.

After initially resisting the open palms which he shoved in our faces we decided the best bet to ensure the safe passage of our bags was to give the persistent Karun a few coins and a chocolate bar that was aptly named ‘Smack’ (Laurence finds this brand so hilarious he bought 10 bars to give out once he’s back at work). Ecstatic with his hoard, Karun soon became our new best friend, asking for photos and posing for the camera. If the caste system here wasn’t so definitive, I could see him becoming a standup comic, like a mini Indian Lee Evans.

Despite being wrapped up to the max in our new cashmere pashminas our 4am tuk tuk ride to a guesthouse picked at random from the Lonely Planet was a freezing one. After 40 winks and fresh hot showers we ventured out straight into Jodpur’s old town. Immediately Janine was shit on by a bird, which could only have been a turkey, judging by the size of the splatter…

Personally I can’t see what’s wrong with a bottled water shower, smack bang in the middle of the street but Janine was one unhappy lady – unlike the gathered crowd who couldn’t control their laughter. We used anti-bac as shampoo which made her a little happier. Oh it’s the simple pleasures in life sometimes…

Janine is a shithead, or so the song goes that Laurence and I made up soon after. Janine is a shithead and matches Jodpur, seemingly a city also covered in muck. This is one dirty place.

With Janine looking like a drowned but freshly scrubbed rat, we were on way to the beautifully preserved and presented Maharaja Palace, now open for tourists. From its perch atop the hill overlooking the town we could see Jodpur for what it is – India’s blue city! Hard to imagine and with only hints of an azure gloss at street level, from the Palace we could see that many of the city’s buildings are painted in a brilliant blue – traditionally believed to bring luck.

After lolling around for a couple of hours we bartered for a tuk tuk which rushed through the town’s central streets. Tourists are less common here which means two things; a) the people are friendlier and b) they are more susceptible to begging – In fact, we think many of the locals perceive us as walking ATMs.

En route back to the hotel Laurence unintentionally taught a couple of street kids a lesson in how not to beg as they were unfortunate enough to shove their demanding paws into our tuk tuk just as he unleashed the mother of all sneezes. We noticed the snot, which gravitated right into the palms, was thick and green just as the tuk tuk zoomed off again. It was a complete accident but our dark sides thought it was perfect.

By 9pm we were all aboard another night bus – this time bound for Jaisalmer, a fortified town in the very Northwest of the country and the last major settlement before the Pakistan border.

The bus garage, a dark and dingy back-ally, had already given off a sense of foreboding. Once on the bus we knew why; unable to secure any sleeper ‘coffin’ beds we were forced to take up standard chairs amongst the filth and dirt that the rest of the bus was covered in. With Janine and I grabbing a pair of seats together, Laurence found himself sitting next to what at first appeared to be a mountain of blankets, saris and clothes but later turned out to be a person hibernating from the desert night’s cold. Like an Ostrich that hides its head in the sand when scared a petrified Laurence went into his shell – even more so after waking up a couple of hours into the journey to find a fellow sleeping passenger’s hand outstretched over the headrest and planted right on Laurence’s shoulder. Laughing out loud at his situation, Janine and I took photos of Laurence and his new friend. This turned out to be a grave mistake as the camera’s flash had highlighted the grime that caked our own seats. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the journey leaning forward and pondering why on earth we had subjected ourselves to this.

Thankfully the nightmare was soon over but as we pulled into Jaisalmer’s historic central quarter we realised the bus had only been the beginning of our problems – it was 4am and we needed to find a hotel. Despite the early hour there were touts lining the bus stop and, desperate for our custom, they had quickly surrounded us -shouting in our faces to see their guesthouses which were all ‘’very nice’’ apparently.

Half knowing that this was coming we’d hatched a plan to pick a hotel at random from our guidebook but once in the rickshaw we fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book, believing the driver’s yarn about our chosen accomodation being ‘’full up. And rubbish” and so were consequently taken to his own guesthouse.

After kindly turning down the hole-in-the-wall bedroom he’d offered we were eventually (and rather reluctantly) taken to another one listed in the book. Finally we were able to settle down for a few hours until the morn. Waking up, we realized our senses had been dulled by the darkness and our tiredness. The room was dirty, small and expensive. We checked out (with some difficulty as the hotel manager presumed he’d struck a deal for three nights) and managed to find another – this time in Jaisalmer Fort itself.

Jaisalmer fort is the heart of the old city which can only be described as a time warp back to medieval times. The fort, which is still used and lived in by the town’s people is a hub of activity; market traders, tightrope walkers, praying holy men and women washing clothes in water gullies running through the middle of the streets all cram into this buzzing hive of rickshaws, motorcycles and free roaming cows and pigs. This is an India that fundamentally hasn’t changed but merely adapted to accommodate the modern world and an influx of tourism.

Finding a guesthouse amongst the madness and crumbling walls was unexpectedly easy. With clean rooms, promises of hot showers and views from a rooftop terrace we were glad to have moved.

We had come to Jaisalmer to experience all it is famed for, including camel treks through the surrounding desert – now the town’s biggest business. After shopping around for the best deal we informed our hotel that we wouldn’t be going on safari with them (their trip was three times the price of their nearest competitors) and immediately noticed a difference in their attitude towards us. The next morning we had discovered our electricity – and therefore heating – had been turned off in the night. It had been freezing! We later learned that many guesthouses are infamous for their dirty tricks of luring tourists into their pretty hotels with cheap rates before fleecing them with over-priced desert trips, hyped up with yarns about theirs being the best trip imaginable.

By chance we had booked with a friendly gentleman named Sebastian who could arrange for us to go alone with our guide, or join a group. Initially we opted for the first option, thinking it would be more intimate to go as a threesome but changed our minds once we’d met the young professional couple from Buenos Aires and the solo female traveller from Tel Aviv who’d best be described as an ‘uber traveller’ – in other words one of those hippy types who, from previous experience, supposedly claim to have seen the whole world and everything in it but in fact know very little about anything.

Driving in an open-top, Indian-made imitation Jeep through scrubland for the best part of 45 minutes, we eventually pulled into a clearing where our caravan of camels awaited us.

With Laurence and I being total Dons, we were naturally given the two biggest and most prized / valuable camels. High on our thrones, we were able to laugh at Janine, who is a hair’s width too tall to officially be classed as a midget, when she was given a camel that was almost shorter than her. Subsequently, Janine and I would laugh at Laurence as it turned out that his camel, Gerald, was fittingly the horniest beast in the herd. We were told Gerald often needed ‘camel love’ eight times a week. After lunch we were treated to a first hand view of this camel dating as Gerald (often with Laurence still riding him) tried to dry hump (excuse the pun) any female camel in sight.

Setting off again Lawrence and I spearheaded the train like Maharajas. Upon our steeds we were as regal as the greatest Indian kings, plodding deeper into the dry desert, the sun above baking our skins.

For lunch we stopped at what we were told was a real life oasis – except there was no water as it is the middle of the dry season. Nonetheless, we ate and snoozed for a few hours as it was too hot to ride until later when Laurence and I naturally headed the group again.

With confidence oozing out of our headscarves, Laurence of Arabia (as I started calling him) and I were able to ride our camels at almost full pelt until we pulled away from our guides and the others. We’d escaped into the tranquility of the desert with no one else in view. The desert felt like it belonged to us until Laurence realised he’d lost his camera – he had dropped it somewhere between a shrub and a tree, or the three thousand others between them.

Turning back to retrace his hooves, Laurence left me alone. I plodded forward, safe in the knowledge that if I took it slowly the group would catch up but just for the moment it is just me and Papaya, my colossal camel.

After the original look of worry when he saw my fourteen stones jump out of the jeep and onto his back, Papaya and I had bonded. He’s young but smart, and whilst he’s used to following the camel caravan I’d given him his first taste of pioneering expedition.

With Laurence and the group (who had miraculously found his camera) coming back into sight, I realised I’d taken a slightly wrong path at exactly the same time as Papaya did. And so, presuming we were lost and therefore doomed, he decided to lie down.

Anyone who hasn’t ridden a camel before won’t be able to relate to this experience; firstly the camel must bend its front knees and plonk onto its chest, flinging the rider forward. This is a particularly stressful moment for male riders as the rider’s entire weight rests his baby-maker against the front of the saddle. Then, in a flash, the camel snaps its hind legs to the ground, tossing the rider backwards so that both camel and rider drop to the floor in a split second. Whilst frightening at first, it’s manageable if the rider expects his camel to lie down after commanding it to do so.

According to Laurence who had spotted my diversion and could just make out my head and upper torso above the shrub line, I had been there one minute and had disappeared the next – apparently as if falling into a deep hole!

In a grump because he couldn’t see the group anymore, who from our position on the ground were out of eye line again, Papaya, the great lump, wouldn’t move. And nothing I could do would rouse him. He was down and that was the way it was staying until embarrassingly both Papaya and I were shouted at by our guide who had come to rescue us and whip my stubborn camel into shape. “Why you make him sit?!” he asked me.

All was forgotten as we approached the giant sand dunes where we would spend the night under a blanket of stars that stretched as far as the eye could see. After our guides muted their Nokia ringtones, the silence of the desert was only broken by the sound of camel fart, and the occasional grunt from Gerald, who was still horny and calling out for another date with his girlfriend.

Rising early but fresh-faced from the morning cold, we had a quick breakfast and marveled at our guides cleaning the cooking utensils with sand. Back on our camels, we set off at a trot, some of us giggling, some of us screaming in the same way children react the first time they ever sit on a pony. Like the Sultans we are, Laurence, Hernan the Argentinian guy (with his eighties curly mullet lapping behind) and I leave the girls and press on. Despite being a considerable distance ahead, we hear Janine behind us – she is in her element and cackling like a tyrant warlord steaming into battle. Anyone listening carefully beyond the mad laughter would also have heard a scared-stiff Israeli girl, whose lazy camel had been tied to the rear of Janine’s, shouting the words “make them go slower you crazy English bastard!”. To her credit, Janine just smiled and dug her heels in a little harder so that the wind rushing past her ears would drown out any other sounds.

Battered, bruised and feeling like our camels had ridden us for two days rather than it being the other way round, we returned to Jaisalmer. Covered in sand and itching to hell I find myself thinking I’ve been bitten on my stomach – I couldn’t have been more right. Looking down I see a Tick the size of a thumbnail buried up to its knees inside my belly.

Now I’ve been stung by jellyfish on numerous occasions, attacked by a small swarm of wasps and eaten alive by sandflies but let me tell you, nothing can prepare in finding a large creepy-crawly literally sucking at your blood! Thankfully I didn’t have much time to dwell on the discovery as the hotel owner, who had watched my initial reaction with some amusement, removed the tick with one far-too-casual-for-my-liking swoop and threw it off the side of his rooftop restaurant. I was left staring at the speck of blood on my stomach and wondering how on earth the tick’s head still wasn’t attached to me.

Though not common in India, Laurence warned me of the possibility of Lymes disease so I text my friends Mark, Liam and George – all of whom are someway down the line to becoming doctors – who came back with advice on how to treat the bite and prevent infection. Safe in the knowledge of their words of wisdom off we trotted to find the local doctor. It was surprisingly easy and within a few minutes we’d sourced the universal red cross street sign which meant I would be okay. As we neared we remembered this was India. Sat underneath a sign above the doorway which read ‘Poison’ was an old man who in fact, turned out to be the doctor himself. After explaining how I’d received the unwanted love bite I was ushered through the Poison door and into the Doctor’s surgery which, by the look of it, couldn’t have changed since he’d first passed his medical exams approximately 100 years ago. With typical Indian hygiene, the examination table was lined with goat hair (matted with grease from decades of use); a stethoscope hung from the wall hook, formed from a cow’s horn which also held a bag of what was presumably the staff canteen. Within a minute the Doctor had prescribed me some anti-allergy / anti-inflammatory pills and asked for a donation of 100 rupees (£1.20) which I gladly paid once he’s added the drugs, upon my request, that my mates had mentioned. The whole episode, including a trip to the nearest pharmacy had taken 15 minutes and cost less than £2. Whilst I am now fit to live another day and fight another tick we did have one more battle to win before leaving Jaisalmer – this time over money when our hotel returned our fresh laundry which somewhere along the washing line had managed to become dirtier than it had been when we first gave it to them.

Sporting our monkey-piss stained attire we were on the train to Jaipur. My ticket number was 7331, which should indicate just how big India’s train system and rail network is. The trains seem to descend to a new level with every one we take – this one the lowest of the low with its mice scurrying between the carriages.

At 4am, some 12 hours later, we were boarding the bus for Agra. In just another 8 hours we would be within sight of the Taj Mahal.

Maybe it’s because we’ve just ridden an extremely long, cold and noisy bus but the sound of road toots are really getting to me. I’m sure the incessant, never-ending, and unrelenting blasting of air-horns by buses, lorries, tuk tuks, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws and trains are doing some lasting damage. I accept that India is a loud place; cows moo in your face from just 20cm away, every street is graced with the sound of some one hocking up a giant spit ball, every train ride offers the loudest symphony of snores, farts and burps that one is ever likely to hear but the constant, nonsensical detonating of horns that stretches along every meter of every street (which triples in volume at every corner or junction) will drive me to clinical insanity before the end of this trip. Never before have I been so sensitive to any sort of noise but I’m sure it is made worse because there is no logic in any of this tooting. From what I can tell, it seems the Indians give long blasts of the horn when passing any other vehicle, when being passed, when turning left, or right, when not turning and going straight, when stopping, when accelerating or simply to break the rare relative silence when no one else has tooted for a nano-second. To make it worse, their horns are all customised to the loudest possible decibel level. It may have something to do with the fact that every bumper has a hand-written sign which reads: “HORN OK PLEASE”.

Arriving at the Taj we knew our journey, and all the smaller individual ones within it had been worth the effort. The monument is visible from almost everywhere in Agra but it’s only up close you can fully appreciate its size and beauty. All three of us left sharing the age-old but often true notion that pictures don’t always do justice. We also left content that our expensive ‘foreigner’ tickets had allowed us to bypass the massive Indian Citizen queues where the locals were being ushered by guards with guns. In fact, this is the only working queue we have seen in India and so, in our minds at least, this was payback for the uncountable number of times that people have pushed in front of us over the past 3 weeks.

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