There’s such a lot of world to see

Our first full day in Jaipur, the dusky pink capital of Rajasthan, consisted mainly of shopping and sight-seeing. Well, for me it did, for the guys it consisted of sitting around patiently in shops whilst I haggled. Anyway, I got a lovely couple of souvenirs that will soon be winging their way back to the UK – Mum, get ready for another trip into the loft!

It’s very humid here in Jaipur, I think because we’re having some rain overnight, and so it makes everything damp but hot during the day. So walking around all day was pretty tiring, but also fun – people here are so much friendlier than Delhi, and everywhere you go people shout out “Hello, hello, how are you? What is your name?”. It’s like being David Beckham for the day, only shorter, darker, and less likely to fool around with a Personal Assistant. The traffic is still crazy, but even that is just Delhi-lite.

After the shops, we wandered up to the Observatory, a few hundred years old and built by a Marharaja who was obsessed apparently with predicting weather, seasons, and telling the time, and believed that the bigger the instrument, the more accurate the reading. It certainly is impressive – some of the sundials are about 75 feet high. As we were having our photo taken in front of the zodiac signs, an official looking guy came up and asked us for our camera ticket. As it was a Monday, and we got free entry, we were slightly suspicious of this, and told him that we’d only pay at the booth. It wouldn’t be unusual here to be scammed into paying for something like that that wasn’t necessary. Sure enough, though, it turns out we had to pay 50 rupees to take our cameras in and take photos. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, though, Michelle and I decided that we’d seen all that we needed to, and made a break for freedom out of the front gate without paying. Gary and Brad were too honest, and paid up – they had to deny all knowledge of me to avoid being hit for my fee.

A couple of other sights later, we got a tuk-tuk back through the crazy traffic to a restaurant, where we all shared some good veggie food including some incredible lentils, then set out to find a car to take us to Pushkar, Udaipur and take the others on a further tour of Rajasthan, while I’ll leave them there and head southwards to Mumbai.

The next morning, we were all up bright, early, raring for our breakfast of banana pancakes, and dressed immaculately in white. It was the Hindu festival of Holi, celebrated in riotous style by throwing coloured powder over everyone. Apparently, if you can recognise yourself in the mirror, you’ve not played Holi right. As we left the gates to go up and watch the Elephant Parade, we met a musician who the others had got talking to the night before. We invited him to join us at the festival, and he agreed, but invited us to his home first. It was my first experience of being in an Indian home, and it was a real honour and an eye-opener at the same time. This guy lived with his brother, sister-in-law and their four children in one really small room, with stone floor, walls, and a roof that leaked. They all slept on one blanket, and all round the walls were hanging bags of chillis, garlic, the children’s clothes, and pretty much everything they needed to live. Despite the obvious poverty, we were made so very welcome – we were given cups of chai, and his eldest nephew played a song for us and played his drums. The two younger children, though cautious of us at first, were just adorable – we were intrigued to see them drinking chai at such a young age. It was a real honour, and another memory that I’m sure will stick with me for a long time.

He took us along to the Elephant Parade, but decided not to stick around. We had prime spots and were able to get very up close and personal with the jumbos as they marched past, resplendent in their face paints and their manicured and pedicured nails. I love these animals, so being so near to them was a real thrill. Every few elephants were interspersed with marching bands – perhaps a relic from colonial times? I’m not too sure – and brightly-coloured dancers. Following them on to a stadium, Michelle and I went for a ride round the field on an elephant, on which I discovered two things:
1. It is impossible to get up on an elephant and keep any dignity. You have to step on the head, poor things, then you get push/pulled up to the top. Praise the Lord for long skirts.
2. They could replace every fairground ride with an elephant, and none of the thrill would be lost – when they stand up, you get tipped right back like on a tilt-o-whirl, then for the rest of the time it’s a rocking motion akin to a ship in a gale. Plus there’s the added thought that they could stampede at any given time.
It was loads of fun, and something else I can cross off my ‘to do’ list.

We went on for an all-you-can-eat thali place; at first we were whisked up to the air-con tourist section where you pay more, so we insisted we sit downstairs with the locals, and for the equivalent of 50p, stuffed ourselves silly. Afterwards on the street, we got our first taste (literally) of the Holi colours, as vendors saw us as blank canvases. We’d bought white shirts just for this purpose, thinking it will be a good, unique souvenir when we get back. Our faces, hair and shirts were now splattered beautiful rainbow colours, orange, pink, green, purple, and to top things off, it started to rain, which makes the dye set. Walking down to the main road, the reception we now got was unbelievable. Forget David Beckham, now we were in the super-A-list celeb status reserved for people like Chantelle. Absolutely every single person we passed, even people driving past, were cheering and shouting “Happy Holi!”. I think I like being famous.

After we paid a visit to a beautiful handmade shoe shop (and I didn’t even buy any! How good am I?), Gary decided he’d had just about all the dye he could take for one day and headed back, while Michelle, Brad and I went back to the stadium for the pinnacle of the Elephant Festival. We were waiting there a while, when a girl from Glasgow in front of me pointed out that sitting right behind us were two of the girls from Footballers’ Wives. As I was trying to explain the concept of this to Michelle and Brad, employing such terms as “bucket loads of fake tan” and “baby-swap-dog-suffocation fiasco”, Brad, being the friendly guy that he is, turned round, introuced himself, and was soon chatting away to them (well, to one of them – the other seemed to think she was still more of a celebrity than I am in these parts which is, frankly, unthinkable). They paled at the sight of us all coloured up, and I’m sure went into shock at the thought of green dye getting on their hair extensions. They are here to film a documentary, to be shown in two one-hour slots later this year, so keep your eyes out (and film it if you can, as Brad might be on it at one point). It’s all about them coming to India and getting enlightenment – it only takes three weeks, apparently.

We waited, along with hundreds of tourists and thousands of Indian families, for the festival to begin. First off was the parade – it was something really special to see these elephants all dressed up in their glad-rags, then the costumes were judged. The adorable 2-year old baby elephant who led the parade got a special prize for her decorations. Next up was the tug-of-war, with an elephant versus 16 tourists. This is the bit that Brad might be on tv – Michelle and I talked him into signing up for it, and one of the Footballers’ Wives girls jumped in right in front of him. As you can probably guess, it was a complete walkover to the elephant, although Brad says that there was one German guy who wanted to talk tactics with the rest of the team. I don’t know about you, but my tactic in a situation like that would pretty much be “don’t get stood on”.

Elephant Polo, unfortunately, wasn’t as exciting as it sounds. The pitch was really small, for starters, I’d have loved to see them really run round the huge stadium field. That really would be a sight. Just as we were about to leave, they asked for tourist volunteers to play Holi with the elephants. Cool, we thought, so ran up and got our free t-shirts. Spotting an opportunity, Michelle and I put those t-shirts in my bag, thinking we could keep them clean as a souvenir. Horrified that we could venture on to the field without an official t-shirt, the man in charge gave us another one each – result! This went over my clothes AND over my backpack, giving me that trendy Quasimodo look that all the kids love so much these days. On the count of three we were off, bucket loads of colour firing down on us from all directions. I was keeping my eyes closed most of the time (you try it with your eyes open!), so kept losing my bearings. It was almost intimidating at times, being surrounded by so many teenagers and men, throwing powder at me, but luckily Brad was a good bodyguard, and at one point just grabbed my hand and ran me out of a circle. Michelle was up on an elephant, but she fared no better up there, ending up bright pink.

The Indian media were out in force, and we actually ended up as genuine celebrities – I lost count of the number of times I was interviewed for Indian tv. Most of the time it was along the lines of yes, this is a fun festival, it’s a great time to be here, Jaipur is a great city, but the funniest exchange went like this:

Interviewer: “Will you recognise yourself when you look in a mirror?”

Me: “No, I don’t think so, I’ve got colour all in my hair and on my face”

Interviewer: “And what will your reaction be?”

Me: “I think I’ll probably scream”

Interviewer: “Like what?”

Me: “AAARRGH”.

Following this, the tug-of-war’ers were called up to get their trophy. I was standing near Brad when the Minister of Tourism turned to me with a trophy and said “There you go”. “Oh no”, said I, “I wasn’t in the tug-of-war”, “Yes, yes, there you go”. So I took it, and of course told Michelle to get hers as well.

We finally made it home bright, tired, safe, a bit freaked out, laden down with free goodies. I could get used to the celebrity life.

We were only staying in Agra one day, which is pretty much par for the course – once you’ve seen the Taj Mahal, it just makes you pity any other monuments. As Gary, Michelle and Brad were all heading to the same place as I, Jaipur, they got tickets for the same train. Unfortunately this meant another dream-wrenchingly early start, to leave the hostel at 5.30am.

Perhaps miraculously, we were all up on time, and managed to get two rickshaws right outside the hostel – Michelle and Gary took one, Brad and I the other. The day didn’t get off to the best start when our rickshaw gradually started losing power, and it eventually ground to a halt on a dark stretch of road that patently wasn’t the train station. I got a fit of the giggles as the driver had to kick start it, Fred Flinstone style, with one foot out the side. I guess the AA doesn’t come this far out.

Eventually we made it to the train station, and found Michelle and Gary inside. After asking around a couple of times, we worked out that our train would leave from Platform 1 – the bad news, though, was that it was running an hour and a half late. Undeterred at first, we waited stoically on a bench on the platform, watching a gang of monkeys opposite picking their way through the rubbish. Soon though, we heard a rumour that it would be even later than this, and would in fact arrive at 9am. With this news, we decided to find something a bit more substantial to sustain us, and headed to the station restaurant which had just opened. We had a banquet-sized table to ourselves, and we ordered chai and vegetable cutlets (similar quality to those on the train the day before, and I should know – I’m a European) and settled in for the long wait. Gary got his laptop out, which attracted a lot of attention from fascinated Indian station workers, and Michelle and I played cards. Well, I say played, I have an astonishingly bad memory for card games, so I had to learn them again from scratch. I promised Michelle I wasn’t a hustler, and we started a game of Rummy.

About 9.30, when we had been told numerous times “the train will be here in half an hour”, we started to get impatient, and I was almost ready to throw in the towel and try to find an alternative way to Jaipur. Rationally, though, I should have known that getting impatient wasn’t going to change a thing. However, at 10.00, all the promises came good, and the train at last rolled into Agra Fort Station.

When Indian trains get to a major station, they stay put for a long time. Chai wallahs wander the platform, selling little clay cups filled with chai for a few rupees. Goods and stock get loaded on to travel cross-country. There’s even time for some of the men to get off, have a wash, and get back on again. So when our train came in, we had a while to wander up and down the platform to find our carriages (we were all sitting separately). The first couple of carriages we saw were literally packed like sardines and, to be honest, I started to get a touch of the Princess about me and was thinking “I can’t go like that”. As Brad had already made the leap of faith and got into his carriage, and seeing Michelle and Gary were about to do the same, I found my name posted outside with all the reservations, gulped, and got on.

And it was fine. A tad crowded maybe, certainly dusty and dirty, but fine. I was sitting next to a young family with two small boys, throwing chunks of chapatti out the window to the monkey on the tracks, though all three of us yelled and jumped back when it came right up to the window. Before we’d even set off, Michelle and Gary wandered through to my carriage, and we all found seats together – Brad was happy enough where he was. Knowing we had at least a five hour journey ahead of us, Michelle and I carried on our game of Rummy, and soon we had an audience, about five or six Indian guys gathered round, asking us if we were playing Rummy. After a couple of games, we invited them to join us and they showed us how they played it over here, slightly different to us, but easy enough to pick up. And you know what? It was really good fun. We spent the whole six hours (yep, instead of making up time, we lost yet another hour) playing cards with these guys – they barely spoke English, we spoke none of their language yet somehow we mangaged to find a common connection and have a truly memorable journey. When I look back on this trip in years to come, I know that time on the train will be one of the stand-out things that sticks in my mind.

Getting to Jaipur station was hot, crowded, and filled with touts. Paying no attention to them, we marched up the platform and went straight to the tourist information office, where we were going to book our hotel that we’d picked out of the Lonely Planet. Because it’s festival time in Jaipur (in fact, all over India, but Jaipur is one of the hot spots to be right now), the hotels were fully booked, but the man working in the office recommended another one to us. Slightly suspicious, and thinking maybe he was on commission, we eventually agreed to take a look, as the rates were the same, if not a bit cheaper, than the others in the book. And then came the next pleasant surprise of the day. The hotel is wonderful, really fabulous. The rooms are big, clean, airy, there’s a garden in the front and a balcony on the second floor where I’m going to eat breakfast in a short while.

That night we headed further up the main road in Jaipur, MI Road, to a revolving restaurant. We arrived a bit early for the revolutions, so went to the Tex-Mex themed bar on the 9th floor, and I had just about the strongest Bloody Mary ever known to man. Heading back up, we sat down, enjoyed the ride and the views, and ate one of the tastiest meals I’ve had since I’ve arrived.

All things considered, a surprisingly good day.

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