India Day 3 - Jaipur

We woke up early this morning to catch a city bus to Jaipur. We were warned the bathrooms on the bus would be "very basic". There wasn't a toilet on the bus but after an hour we found out what Bish had meant - he talked to the driver, who stopped at the side of the highway and those who needed went on the side of the road.

We had also been warned that the hotel in Jaipur was "horrible", often followed by a comment about how the service was terrible. Bish had complained many times that GAP shouldn't use it, so we were nervous getting there. However we were thrilled with the hotel - nice big clean rooms, the first with no bugs - fantastic! And, as he said, they didn't have much service, which we preferred since we didn't have to fight off hoards of Indians to be able to carry our own bags. Agra was bad for this - while waiting for the tuktuks to the bus, the hotel boys moved all our bags together and surrounded them. When the tuktuks arrived they pounced and grabbed all our bags and wouldn't let us carry them. They then took them out to the tuktuks and stood around waiting for us to tip them. I don't like how pushy people here are to help, forcing you to pay them for services you don't want.

Bish took us on an hour-long orientation walk which was mostly a crazy confusing route to get to the interesting part of town. As soon as we got to the good part he pointed in a few directions and rattled off all the things we could do, then left us there - "I'm not your babysitter!" We went for a brief walk in the old city (Jaipur is known as the "pink city" because the old city is painted with pink stucco) but quickly got frustrated walking down narrow roads jam-packed with lots of motorcycles and tuktuks, honking and making lots of dirty fumes. We went as a group to a thali restaurant Bish had recommended - they were closed another hour so we were leaving when the manager came running after us. He had gotten in a panic when he saw 14 would-be customers traipsing away. Each place setting had a thali plate with 8 bowls on it. The servers came around and filled the bowls and plate with curries, breads, rice, chutneys, etc, and continued to refill until you told them to stop. So thali in India is like and all you can eat buffet but the food comes to you, and it is much cheaper - 175 rupees / person (3 quid). When leaving the restaurant, they invited us for a tour of the kitchen and then we each had to hit a gong on the way out. Weird!

We got tuktuks back to the hotel - 4 per car, which meant the last one in was kind of hanging out the door. Kirsty nearly lost her arm when we passed a bus but we made it back all limbs intact.One of the other tuktuk drivers took a fancy to one of the girls and there had been a proposal - "six months from now, I will not forget you!". We all had a drinks on the rooftop patio before going to bed.