Whats more dangerous than a rickshaw ride?
Thursday, November 9th, 2006When your rickshaw driver is talking on a cellphone and not even looking at the road! and I’m not talking about cycle rickshaws Im talking about very fast autorickshaws on very busy Delhi roads. Basically you take your life into your hands on any roads. On the 5 hour bus ride yesterday luckily it was dark and I couldn’t see the cars and trucks we were slamming our brakes on for and skidding across the road. My favourite road fun is seeing all the sigs that are so blatently ignored. Like ‘please give way to your right” and people are just driving all over the place, and my personal favourite “this is a quiet zone, please don’t use your horn”….yeah whatever…
Well I made it alive to Jaipur, not on the free ride after waiting for hours in the tourist office…yes yes its just on its way…I gave up and caught the bus. The tourisim guys are adamint that I can’t go anywhere by myself as everyone (apart from them) are trying to rip me off, well its not that bad but going to and back form the bus station to get a ticket and then back again to get the bus the price incresed everytime and once I ended up at a clothing market rather than the bus stop…but well you get there eventually. So after an interesting bus ride I arrived late in Jaipur, the pink city. Actually the bus ride want so bad, I really thought India would be so hard to travel in but the bus was nice, A.C, got free water, had a seat and no one standing and we even stopped for a decent amount of time at a nice place with toilets and food. Amazing….better than any bus in Africa or South America. So the Pink city, painted itself pink to celebrate a visit from Prince Albert…a bit odd I thought…and while its lost much of the pink hue it still is a nice place. Busy, dirty, Indian but lots to see. Its the home of the Maharajha…yeah just like Moulin Rouge and you can even make appoinments to go visit him. You can also go check out a lot of the palace where he lives. I headed there today and had a look around. The most interesting being the amoury where “welcome”signs are spelled out in death instruments, like gums, swords and other nasty looking things. Theres also a “Goodbye” sing as you leave..all very pleasent…
Amazing amount of stuff to buy and did buy a bit today, Did manage to get a cool scarf down fomr 800 rp to 200 (about 4 euros) and got my photo taken on a 200 year old camera, the picture is really cool, in black and white. Also climbed up a big tower where the Maharajha used to throw criminals off, and saw some other amazing looking temple/thing. Had a big converation to a guy on the road about Indians and westerners and how whenever he tries to talk to them they pretty much just tell him to go away, he was really cool though and told me I have a good aura..or something like that….He passed on the name of his guru so I can go have my aura read…hmmmm…maybe it does sound interesting and is a big part of India so I shall see.
The other great part about India is the hilarious tourists getting all spiritual. Im staying at a great guest house with lots of trees and a big coutyard. Its full of hippys getting stoned and listening to crazy music while one guy shakes this shaker thing constantly and another does some weird dance thing on the lawn. Dreads, stripy pants and headscarves are important and you must do yoga and visit temples for spiritual enlightenment, not for photos…in fact throw your camera and all your belongings away because India is just so spiritual man…it is but some of these tourists take it a bit far I think!
Tomorrow its more sightseeing…more temples and forts…more food, more shopping!
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