Jaipur

Jaipur was beautiful, chaotic, infuriating, hot as a god damn furnace and as smelly as a porto-potty. That's a pretty good summary. But beautiful stands out most in my mind. Our obnoxious driver dropped us at the entrance to the Pink City in the morning and we spent the day shmoozing our way around. We started by climbing a steep hill to an unimpressive "Monkey Temple", thankfully none jumped on my lap this time! We got followed by some young boys who couldn't resist tagging along with us all the way back down the hill, and of course, posed for some photos with them. Then a 5 year old slapped my ass. We spent the rest of the day within the beautiful City Palace painted entirely pink to welcome the Prince of Wales in 1853. Talk about a welcoming! We were lucky enough to have an audio tour which entertained most of us quite well (echem, M) for the day. We got trapped in a crazy rain storm which is very atypical for the dry season and one of the few times M and I had seen rain in a while so we delighted to have it cool things off. And the after-rain photos are superb if I say so myself. After the City Palace was when things got frustrating. Again, 4 white women, one tall and blonde, walking down the road in India, especially in Rajastan, attracts A LOT of attention. We tried shopping, and we succeeded, but were hassled way more than we had bargained for. At one point, it actually got so bad, that we decided it was time for a group hug to escape the "Madame, you buy," "Miss, come in my store. Misssssss" for just one minute. With our renewed strength, we headed straight to the silver district, pretended we spoke no English, and got our shopping done. The most impressive part of all the touts however are their abilitites with foreign language. Normally we speak Spanish to eachother to talk when we are being hassled. In Jaipur, no es possible porque todos hablan en Espanol! Not only do all the touts speak Spanish, they can whip out Japanese, Mandarin, French, Russian, German, etc etc. It is amazing what people in India will do for a buck. We finally found some peace over delicious dinner, played some cards into the wee hours of night and crashed.
Our second day in Jaipur was spent at the Ahmer Fort and the Water Palace before heading back to to Delhi. The Water Palace was nothing to write home about but the Fort was pretty gorgeous. Flanked by a bright blue sky, the huge fort climbed up rocky hills and was a great way to spend a few HOT hours. Finally got back in the car with obnoxious driver and made our way back to Delhi. Of course not before him stopping at an overpriced tourist restaurant so he could sneak in the back and eat for free with the drivers. We refused to eat there and he refused to take us elsewhere. And this guy had the nerve to ask for baksheesh. Asshole. Back to Delhi, ditched the driver, got some food, got ridiculously lost from eachother trying to head to the bus stop in 2 separate rickshaws, had 4 heart attackes (one each) and got on the coldest, most uncomfortable overnight bus we have ever taken to Rishikish. Woke up at 6 AM in a garbage dump, I mean bus station. What a welcoming.