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Published: October 16th 2006
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Jaipur and back 1
My cell at the Evergreen in Jaipur With my desperately required emergency cash safely stashed away, I decided that a spot of rest and relaxation would be the order of the day before the upcoming cricket match and so I caught a bus to the holy Hindu pilgimage town of Pushkar with a few English travellers.
The journey itself, although pretty uncomfortable, only took three and a half hours and cost the equivalent of about one pound fifty, which isn't bad at all.
After a day in Pushkar I was bored rigid, as there isn't anything to do once you've seen the lake and the sunset, which takes about five minutes. Most people that hang out in Pushkar are aging hippies and/or smokers who sit around all day philosophising on the meaning of life and practising obscure yoga techniques.
There's no alcohol, no meat and no eggs available in Pushkar, which wasn't such a problem as I was still suffering from what is described in the Lonely Planet as travellers diarhoea. The good thing about India though is that you can just rock up to a chemist and buy prescription only drugs over the counter without a prescription for next to nothing, so I availed
Jaipur and back 2
The transportation from Jaipur to Pushkar myself of some antibiotics, which dealt swiflty with that issue.
Fortunately, on the second day, just prior to sinking into terminal malaise with the place, I bumped into an English guy I'd met in Agra and we managed to find the banned substance of alcohol in a restaurant, which was a real godsend. The staff brought the bottles of Kingfisher over to our table in a sack and made us pour it into Pepsi cups under the table to avoid detection.
I booked a bus back to Jaipur the following day and of course it didn't arrive, due to some mechanical failure and so I had a two hour wait for the next one, which took a good four and a half hours to get back to Jaipur.
There were quite a few English guys going to the India v England cricket match and armed with my Ciprofloxacin, I was confident of being able to sit in one place for a long period of time with no medical dramas!
Enthusiasm wilted though when we arrived at the stadium to discover that our twenty pound seats were nothing more than plastic garden chairs tied together with twine
Jaipur and back 3
First of many of Pushkar lake. underneath a hastily constructed tarpaulin roof, offering a thoroughly crap view in baking heat in between the top of the chicken wire fence and the roof. We couldn't even see the replay screen from where we were.
Of course the locals were loving it and their bizarre hero worship of the Indian players was disturbing to say the least. Every time an Indian fielder came within 50 metres of the crowd, all of them got up and stared, waved and shouted at the bemused looking fielder....after every ball this got rather tedious and it didn't help that England were geting stuffed and there was no beer on sale.
When star batsman, Sachin Tendulkar, arrived at the crease the noise was deafening and the view of the pitch non-existant as the weirdo's in the crowd leered and hollered at their hero and cheered every shot, regardless of whether he made any contact with the ball. The seating arrangements went right out of the window as they all jostled and stood on chairs for a view of the diminutive porker in the middle.
Needless to say, England lost convincingly and we all left before the end to seek refuge
Jaipur and back 4
Pushkar lake again...from a different angle this time! in a hotel bar for a couple of much needed Kingfishers.
I had managed to bring my flight to Bangkok forward by a week, so that I can leave India as quickly as possible and I head back to Delhi today by train and should be in Thailand on Tuesday night.
I am looking forward to leaving India as it's completely exhausting being in the so called golden triangle, with the constant harrassment, rip-off merchants, thieves, questionable food hygiene standards and crap transportation. The Aussie guy that I talked to on that first night in Delhi had it spot on when he said that 99.9% of people will try and rip you off and that Jaipur and Agra are equally as bad, if not worse than Delhi itself.
So, it's goodbye to India and I won't be in a hurry to return. This will teach me for adding on extra stops to my ticket on a whim and the lure of a cricket match...
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Myra
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Things looking up!
Alright Palin ! Sounds like your having a right scream !? No fear, those LadyBoys you were asking me about are not too far now, remember that advice from that Gay bloke about telling them you have a small one for extra discount...invaluable! Chin Chin