Jaipur

                Missing Dharamsala but seeing some more of India is exciting. I felt an unexpected small shock to my system leaving Dharamsala. It really doesn’t feel like the rest of the India, it truly is a mini Tibet. The people move at a more zen like pace, it’s smaller, there are monks everywhere, Dharamsala dwellers reek of love and compassion, and there were cafes everywhere in which foreigners and locals just loafed and discussed.  Maybe it just quickly became my home and I’m homesick?

                “Delhi belly” knocked me down and after a day of recovering in Delhi, primarily in the hotel with one minor sightseeing excursion, I was ready to go to Jaipur. Lonely planet said that “to go to India and not see Jaipur is like never having been born.” Well, that’s an intense quote so I decided that Shane and I needed to go to Jaipur. We hired a car and made the 6 and a half journey south. The traffic here is comparable to if you took LA traffic and intensified it by ten. It was good for Shane to be in India and see some of the slum towns that litter the streets and have children beg him for money. It’s not that I wish darkness on Shane, it’s that I want everyone I love to be awaken, like I have on this trip, from their cozy American bubbles. Yes, we all knew India was third world and expect to see some suffering along with the rich culture and spirituality India offers us. It’s one thing to hear about it, it’s another to be in the middle of it…..

I found Jaipur to be a historically and culturally rich city. We hired an autorickshaw for the day and did a lot of sightseeing, my favorite was Jantar Mantar. It’s an observatory that was built in the 1700’s by some Indian dude OBSESSED with astronomy. It is full of funky astrological sculptures and giant sun dials. Amber Fort was cool as well, it is Jaipur’s “token sight” and the lure of it for me was that you can ride an elephant to the top. The vegetarian Kristen who is in to animal rights had qualms about supporting  a business that makes elephants walk up and down a fort all day but the Kristen who has been wanting to ride an elephant since she was four won that battle. Speaking of elephants, the drivers sit on the elephants head to steer them. One may ask how does the driver get all the way up on to the elephants head? Well, they stand on the elephant’s trunk and the elephant lifts the driver up and on to its head! For those of you, who have never looked an elephant in to the eyes, I’d try to find a way to do this. I’ve never felt such a mystical feeling as I did when I looked at an elephant’s eyes…

Compared to Delhi, Jaipur is mild. There are a lot less people and a lot less people living in hellish poverty. There are still people there who live in a way that no one should have to live, however. The weather in Jaipur is hot and humid but again, nothing compared to Delhi. It was also soooo much greener than I expected and the lush foliage seemed to balance out the noise of the city. Shane and I were laughing at a few things that we heard escaping our mouths that you can only say in India and that you never would have imagined yourself ever saying at home. Here are my favorites:

-          “We’re passing an elephant on the left.”

-          “There is a traffic jam because there is a cow in the street.”

-          “Is this a one lane street? Wait no, those people are just driving in to oncoming traffic.”

-          The word “rupees” is just still funny….

                I had some good food in Jaipur. For lunch we went to a place that came recommended by Lonely Planet called LMB that had a warning about the karmic and health effects of eating meat on the front of the menu. Though I’m one for letting everyone do their thing when it comes to morals and views, I do like to see a place that is so passionate about animal life preservation. Not only was it vegetarian, but the food was really good we had chana masala and some sort of vegetable kababs. For dinner, Shane and I decided to try a revolving restaurant near our hotel. Good thing our food came out fast because I was starting to feel really nauseated and I know I wouldn’t have been able to stay much longer. Though I didn’t like the revolving of the restaurant, again, we enjoyed some really good Indian food. With that said, I’m getting really sick of Indian food…. There was a “pub” in the same building as the revolving restaurant. We had fantasies of finding “decent beer.” Like everyone else I’ve seen, they only had Kingfisher and Fosters. Fosters isn’t normally too bad but the kind they brew here has a funky aftertaste. So after a funky beer, we called it a night.

                Rishikesh is all I have on the agenda for the final five days of my adventure. Because the car was such a long endeavor, we decided to fly. It was an hour and a half flight from Jaipur and though India has a bad rep for unreliable flights (just that they get cancelled often for no apparent reason), traveling went really smooth today. Now, I find myself on the bank of the Ganges River in a spiritual, nature, and yoga filled town waiting to see what India has to show me the next five days….