Monster Horn in India?

Our driver, Ashraf, had dropped hints about buying his own car and setting off as a one-man driving company. After meeting with his boss, I quizzed Ashraf about his desires to buy his own car and go into business for himself. I was trying to probe how much of a business plan he had developed, and he surprised me with how much planning he has done. He claimed to have about 1.5 lakhs saved up as a down payment for his car. A lakh is 100,000 Rs, so his savings represent about $3000, but even more importantly, they probably represent more than his entire annual pay (salary plus tips).

Probing further, I discovered that Ashraf lives about 10 Km from his office, he is not allowed to take a car home at night, he does not own a two wheeler, he does not take the auto rickshaws, but rather pedals a very rundown bicycle to and from work every day. Most things he tells me are exaggerated, so I don’t fully buy that his bicycle commute takes one hour each way, but even at 40 minutes, that’s a very impressive commitment to the job he claims to have held for nine years now. I gained a new level of respect for Ashraf after this conversation. He is living a life that I could not tolerate, but he seems dedicated to giving his two young daughters opportunities that he never had.

That night I re-assumed the mantle of doctor, searching the Internet for information about skin rashes. I considered and discarded the possibilities of shingles, scabies, chicken pox, measles and smallpox, leaving me stuck on allergenic hives as the most likely culprit.

After not sleeping well, being driven nearly mad (I know that seems redundant) by itching sensations and discovering on Tuesday morning that I was losing ground to the rash, I decided to consult someone who knows more than me (meaning there were over 6 billion souls to choose from). Shulbha, the kind woman who works for Peggy and who had shepherded my first interaction with the Indian medical profession, again rose to the occasion, locating a skin specialist fairly close to Magarpatta. She insisted on driving me there, so we set off in the late morning for a short jaunt.

Dr. Vaishali U. Jagtap’s offices were impossibly small. There was a suite of three rooms, each about 5 feet wide by 7 feet long. The first office was the waiting room. In that room was a receptionist pushed against one wall, and a bench big enough for 2.5 people to sit on just across from her. After 2.5 people were in the waiting room, any other patients would have to cool their heels outside the door.

I apparently came in my Brad Pitt getup, because the receptionist absolutely could not take her eyes off me. I suspect she had never in her career as a medical receptionist had a big, goofy American in her office and she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss a single detail of my very strange existence.

The doctor’s office was next, a little tiny desk with two very small chairs across from it. Dr. Jagtap, a very attractive, petite Indian woman, conducted a short interview then asked to see my rash. Apparently deciding she needed to see me in a more professional setting, she had me move into the examining room, again a room so small that we both barely fit into it simultaneously.

She took out a magnifying glass and studiously examined the worst of the splotches on my skin. After only a few minutes she pronounced her diagnosis – allergy-induced hives, treatable and not terribly serious. She prescribed some drugs, I paid the still gob-smacked attendant 150 Rs and Shulbha took me home.

I was amazed by this second brush with the medical business in India. Dr. Jagtap spent 8 years (4 college, 4 medical school) in higher education to become a doctor, but based on her posted office rates (150 Rs first visit, 100 Rs for any “fallow on” - her words - visits), it’s hard to imagine her making more than $20K per year.

On the way back from the doctor visit, we saw a woman bicyclist get knocked over by a car. She was not seriously hurt, but she got up and started screaming at the driver in Hindi. He rolled down his window and began shouting back – apparently intent on proving that the incident was the bicyclist’s fault. I’ve been knocked down by a car and it’s a very frightening experience, but this episode showed me again how brutal the driving environment is here.

Wednesday was declared “I want to go home” day because we were both sick, the day played out in a dark and rainy fashion and neither of us could think of any good reason why we shouldn’t be back in Colorado at that very moment. I chippered up for a brief moment when I realized the last of the seven one-day cricket matches between Australia and India was about to start, but when I tuned in the appropriate channel, my hopes were dashed. Cyclone Phyan was at that moment passing over Mumbai (and delivering sheets of water to us as well) and the cricket match was cancelled.

By Friday my rash had become close to intolerable and Peggy had basically lost her voice. Even though she had been sick all week, she felt compelled to spend many hours on the phone with her Avaya minions and all that talking took a toll on her vocal cords.

On Saturday we were cheered up by a visit with Sulbha and her family at their home in the western suburbs of Pune. Her husband, Sanjeev, and son, Susang, helped entertain us, along with Sanjeev’s mother and two of his sisters. They fed us great home-cooked Indian food, explained a lot about their approach to the Hindu religion and confirmed my fear that many people in India think that Cricket games are not always straight up competition. Sanjeev is an electrical engineer (as is Sulbha although she is now working in software) and he explained how Pune is trying to deal with the increasing demands for electrical service that result in the many brown outs that we have noticed. Because of the lack of reliable power in many parts of India, most businesses have their own diesel powered generators that kick in whenever grid-power is not available. Pune has managed to convince most of these businesses to run their generators all afternoon long as a matter of course, thereby providing hundreds of kilowatts of extra power that would not otherwise be available. The Pune power company gives substantial rebates to the companies for doing this and that’s why they’re willing to go along with the program. Sanjeev said that by 2012 they will have enough power generation to meet all of Pune’s needs without requiring any businesses to supplement the system with private generators. I like his enthusiasm, but time will tell if this really comes to pass.

Sulbha, Sanjeev and Susang embarrassed us with very lovely gifts – a shawl for Peggy and two Kashmir wool vests for me. They also gave us a book about/by the living god they worship. This guy’s name is Sri Sathya Sai Gita, the successor to Shri Sai Baba and the book contains answers to 1001 questions. I have to admit there were a few questions in there that had never come to mind for me, but I do like Sai Gita’s version of the Golden Rule: “Help Ever, Hurt Never.”

After our visit with Sulbha’s family, we took Ashraf shopping for shoes. The scruffiness and disrepair of his one and only pair had become obvious during the cyclone-spawned heavy rains of the prior days, so we decided to buy him a new pair. Giving him money to do this was not an option because we felt he would use the money for other (very legitimate) purposes, but we really wanted him to have a new pair of shoes.

He drove to a shop that I suspect he had scouted previously, and he immediately picked out a pair of black, leather, lace up, ankle high shoes. Once again we assumed the role of parents, suggesting other models, asking if these shoes really fit, making him walk around in them to try them out, etc. He seemed to really want that particular pair, and they seemed reasonable to us because they were shoes that would serve just as well in “formal” situations as they would in day-to-day working conditions. So we bought him what we assume was his first $60 pair of shoes along with a new pair of socks to replace the only pair we had ever seen him in.

We saw Sulbha again on Sunday, this time at an upscale fashion house in Pune where the designer is renowned enough to have had a number of her designs shown on the walkways of the top Mumbai fashion shows. Peggy had ordered a few custom outfits (Salwar, Kameez and Dupatta) from her and we were there for the final fitting. Unpredictably, we were served corn chowder and corn fritters while we waited for the final touches to be applied. Sujata showed us through her establishment. She had 3 tailors hand sewing many of her creations and she had 3 young boys hand-making embroidery material at looms in another room. Given that we will be attending an Indian wedding before the end of the month, I ordered a custom made regal purple Kurta (very long pull-over shirt) and Chudidar (pants big enough for Andre the Giant) that will hopefully be ready before we fly off to Goa for the wedding.

Over the weekend we got to push start our car three times. The Mitsubishi had threatened to refuse to start any number of times in our first few weeks, but now it was giving notice that it was serious about this repudiation. The first time Ashraf recruited one of the guards at our building and the two of us pushed it fast enough for Ashraf to pop the clutch and get us on our way. The second time Peggy and I were the lone pushers, while our Sunday night dinner guest, Ramesh, had to be drafted into action when we were blocking some serious traffic while trying to get the beast started. This Push Car experience was nothing like the Puja at the real town of Pushkar, but I did seriously counsel Ashraf that I thought the battery terminals were either loose or corroded. He said he would take care of it.

At dinner on Sunday night at Ram Krishna, I was served the biggest entrée I’ve ever seen. It was a Cheese Paper Masala Dosa, which is a paper thin pancake, fried hard but rolled into a tubular shape that makes it look like a log when it’s served. This Dosa (which set me back a Raja-like $2.00) was easily three feet long, and the sheer madness of the size brought a hush to the entire dining crowd. I happily chowed my way through it and the experience was so rich I’m sure I’ll order it again the next time we get to Ram Krishna.

On Monday morning I ordered Aloo Paratha for breakfast, so now the incessant tune that continually churns in my head has morphed to “Aloo Mutter, Aloo Paratha, here I am at Camp Granada…”

Here’s a question that I don’t have an answer to and is not covered in Sai Gita’s book of 1001 Q&As: Can you pre-order a meatatarian meal on an Indian Airline that only serves veg meals?

And a business idea: Monster Horn Wires. Monster Cables has built quite a lucrative business in the USA on the proposition that big, fat, expensive cables will make your AV gear look and sound noticeably better. In India, because the automobile horn gets such an incredible workout, I’m guessing that horn wires only last a year or two. If we made big, fat, expensive horn wires that we guaranteed for 1,000,000 toots (or 250,000 blares), we could probably sell zillions of them. I foresee a whole chain of Monster Horn Wire shops that do nothing except replace horn wires.

Followed by a random piece of trivia: many Hindus worship basil.

Professional Drivers in India

When we left the friendly confines of the USA, we had tried to figure out which types of drugs and treatments we should bring along. Certain prescription drugs seemed to make sense to pack, but when it came to OTC treatments, we (mistakenly) assumed you could buy most of the same brand names here. I was disabused of that earlier when I tried to find Tums and Metamusil. I got second-rate alternatives to Tums and some heinous fiber powder that made me gag every time I tried to mix it with water and drink it, pretty much dooming the whole jar to the dustbin. Having awakened sick on Wednesday - the old head cold/sinus infection double whammy that appears to be my ailment of choice - we were still hopeful we could find Nyquil and Dayquil here, but no such luck. We were offered, instead, medications for colds that contained phenylpropanolamine, a substance that the FDA has essentially banned in the USA.

When I say we were offered, I mean to say that you cannot walk into any type of store here and browse the OTC drugs aisles. Those stores do not exist. Anything that is any kind of treatment at all has to be bought at a Chemist shop and every Chemist shop we have seen so far has been a small shop with a counter. You walk up to the counter, tell the druggist what you want, he or she rummages around in shelves and drawers and pulls out whatever they think is either closest or the best thing for you. Even things that do not require a prescription here have to be bought this way. Furthermore, I’ve been told more than once that things that do require a prescription can pretty much be had without, but only by having an agent at the Chemist store get it off the shelf for you.

In the evening I started reading the novel called “The White Tiger” by an Indian author named Aravind Adiga. It’s a strong condemnation of the corruption and unfairness so rampant in India and it won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2008.

Thursday morning Peggy joined me in the sniffles brigade so ending the extra sympathy I was banking on to help get me through my cold/sinus infection/rash.

That night I made Aloo Mutter, a heavily spiced dish of potatoes, peas and gravy served over rice. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Alan Sherman song “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” so now every time I think of that dish the annoying words to that song (which for some foolish reason I memorized many years ago) keep swirling around my brain.

Friday – we’re both feeling pretty punk. Peggy decides to stay home from the office. Ashraf calls to ask when he should pick up “Peggy Ma’am”, as he calls her, but when I tell him she isn’t going to work because she feels sick and that he can have a day off, he works really hard to convince me that I should go somewhere, so I finally agree to have him take me to Dorabjee’s to pick up the supplies that we were in need of.

And that’s how I learned more about how the driver system works here. Our “contract” with Excell Cars, for whom Ashraf works, costs us $25 per day for an 8 hour day and up to 80 Km of driving. The eight hour days starts when we need the driver and ends at the later of when we don’t need him any more or 8 hours have elapsed. If, however, we don’t need the driver and we inform Excell of that fact in the morning, we are not charged for that day, BUT the driver has to report to the office to be assigned some apparently heinous task (based on Ashraf’s aversion to this outcome). If, on the other hand, we need Ashraf to drive Peggy to work in the morning, his duty for the rest of the day is to hang out in Magarpatta City to see if we need him to take us anywhere else. This means he can sleep, listen to the radio, read etc., just so long as he comes quickly when we call. And this is why it was so important to Ashraf that we ask him to pick us up on Friday…, and Saturday…, and Sunday.

On Saturday morning my state of health had deteriorated further, so I took the opportunity to play doctor, something I hadn’t done since I was very young. Playing doctor in this case meant diagnosing a sinus infection (of which I’ve had plenty and know the symptoms very well) and then prescribing a course of Amoxycillin. Lucky for me, my local pharmacy (i.e.my medicine chest) just happened to have a supply of Amoxycillin, fortuitously packed by yours truly in anticipation of just this type of event.

Later that morning I went to the gym for a lifting and stationary bike session. Like gyms worldwide (except possibly in the tribal areas of Pakistan), this one plays thumping music at all times to help energize you to take that next step on the treadmill or finish that last rep on the weight bench. While riding the bike, a Hindi song came on that sounded very 80s British – sort of “Life In a Northern Town”-like. It was hypnotic and I really wanted to know what the name of it was, but I didn’t want to hail one of the trainer-wallahs over just to ask that question, so I turned to a young Indian woman who was just preparing to get on the recumbent stationary bike next to me and said “Excuse me”. Now, I have a pretty deep voice and when I have a sinus infection I sound like God trying to impersonate Barry White, so she had this look of fear on her face when she turned to see what in the world the big, goofy white guy was going to demand from her.

When I asked if she knew the name of the song playing, her face creased into a huge smile. Yes, she did know. It was “Tum Mile” (toom millay) from a recent Bollywood film of the same name. I had her spell it for me and remarked how much I liked it and that seemed to make her very happy.

The song ended, to be replaced by the typical, clanking, quasi-rap crap that most gyms (with the possible exception of those in the tribal areas of Pakistan) insist on playing. But midway through, that song stopped. I looked up to see that one of the attendants was fiddling with the audio system. The next thing I knew, “Tum Mile” was playing again. The attendant and the young woman whom I had queried were pretending not to look at me, but I could see they were sneaking a peek. I gave them big grins of acknowledgement. It was humbling and exceedingly sweet that they went to the trouble of playing that song again just for my benefit.

Later in the day Ashraf proudly bought us each a squeezed sugar cane drink. It came as an unappealing looking brown/green liquid on ice, but it tasted pretty good. The best I could tell it was just sugar, water and ice, but the raw nature of the just-squeezed sugar cane gave it a very light fruity taste. The drink is made by running a stalk of sugar cane through a set of rollers that squeezes the be-Mohammed out of the stalks, sending a slurry of sticky liquid down a trough into the glass. Whatever was on those stalks and the vendor’s fingers before the squeezing started ended up in our glass along with the sugar cane juice.

On Sunday Peggy got to play doctor. My body rash had worsened. She diagnosed it as “Prickly Heat”, basically hives brought on by the sweaty folds in the body rubbing against each other and causing some type of allergic reaction. I wasn’t convinced, but her course of action, which consisted of liberal sprinkling of baby powder and some type of Zen state to try to avoid reacting to the powerful itching sensations, seemed benign enough.

We had lunch with Dana at Ram Krishna, a totally Veg, completely local establishment. We were the only white faces in the entire place, and we were naturally escorted to the A/C portion of the establishment. We deduced that the outer room, which had no air conditioning, served exactly the same food as the A/C rooms, but due to the lack of cooling amenities, the prices were cheaper there. Even in the high rent room lunch for three, including a lime soda and a strawberry shake, came to a Maharajaly 389 Rs ($8). Everything is relative, though. Ashraf asked why we wanted to go to such a fancy, expensive place, whereas we thought the meal had been dirt cheap.

On Monday I went to meet the office manager for Excell Cars, from whom we are contracting Ashraf and our car. We had received our bill a few days prior and I was a bit surprised to see the cost for our trip to Aurangabad - $281.00. Now this was not as cheap as most things seemed to be in India, and certainly exceeded any notion that we were paying $25/day for our car and driver.

And so I met Prakash Bhandari, Business Head for Excell Cars, a man exceedingly well dressed (nicely pressed shirt and beautiful tie), not to mention charming, connected and probably a little bit sly. We exchanged a few pleasantries then got down to business. The bottom line is this. For trips outside of Pune, the standard rate for the car we normally tootle around in (an intermediate Mitsubishi sedan) was 12 Rs per kilometer for a minimum of 250 Ks, plus 150 Rs per day for the driver, plus 200 Rs per night for keeping the driver away from home. Our trip to Aurangabad had taken place in a Toyota Innova, an SUV that is considered an upgrade from the Mitsi. For that vehicle, our tariff went up to 13 Rs per Km for a minimum of 300 Ks per day. Now I better understood why Ashraf had been, and continued to be, so persistent in trying to jawbone us into taking weekend trips outside of Pune. When we do so, his company makes a lot of extra money and so does he.

I paid Prakash in cash, then asked him about the proper accommodations for the driver on an overnight trip. He started by telling me that the driver could fend for himself, but then went on to say , “If you are on a budget, the driver can take care of himself. Remember the driver takes care of you, so sometimes it’s good for you to take care of your driver.”
This pretty much mirrored the dance I had done with Ashraf during our Aurangabad excursion, so I felt pretty sanguine about how I had handled it.

Next we talked about Cricket. Like everyone in India, Prakash is a fan of cricket, but that’s kind of like saying that everyone in the US is a fan of baseball. Being a fan doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re knowledgeable. Prakash said something that should have been obvious, but had eluded my somewhat meager cognition powers up to now. Cricket in India may very well be fixed. In this country, corruption is the lubricant that seems to make this dysfunctional system work. If corruption is so endemic in the rest of the country, why would Cricket be any different? Prakash seemed to be coming from this point of view, and when I asked Ashraf later whether he thought Cricket matches were ever fixed, he gave me that strange Indian side-to-side head bob that means either “yes”, “maybe”, “OK” or “why not” depending on the situation. Finally, like a Norwegian slap to the forehead, I got it. Big (although illegal) money is bet on Cricket matches here, very much like the big dollars that go to the underground bookie network in the USA every weekend of the football season. Combine lots of money with a culture in which the giving and receiving of bribes is extremely commonplace and it’s not hard to imagine that the national sport would be part of the normal way of conducting business here.

This revelation helped put into focus a brief conversation I’d had with an Indian man at dinner a few nights earlier. Peggy and I went to dinner at Curves, an upscale restaurant that caters mainly to the youth of Pune. While sipping on an awful martini (Indian gin and the arcane 1/3 dry vermouth recipe make an uninspiring cocktail) I was musing about the possibility of bringing Cricket to the US. This same gentleman, sitting at the table next to ours and put off by his dinner partner’s insistence that a cell phone was a more interesting dinner companion than a real human being, seemed to be intrigued by this line of lunacy. We asked him to speculate on the possibility, and he predicted unequivocally that Cricket would take the USA by storm within 3 years. Shocked, I asked why. He said the combination of the 2020 form of Cricket (which has reduced games from a very tedious 5 days to about 3 hours, complete with sexy cheerleaders and exuberant crowds) and the gambling money available in the USA made it inevitable.

He, of course, is dead wrong, but his unstated belief (which I now understand better) that Cricket, gambling and fixing go hand in hand, gave him the clear vision of how unavoidable this outcome will be.

Having pried open the door of corruption, Prakash went on to tell me that he might be able to help with any problems I encountered while in India. “I’m a congressman”, he said by way of explanation. At first I thought he meant he served in either the national or state parliament, and I was prepared to be duly impressed, but just as he began his explanation of what being a congressman meant, I figured it out. The biggest, longest serving and most popular political party in India is the Indian National Congress party, the party of Ghandi and Nehru commonly known simply as “Congress”. He didn’t bother to paint any pictures in black and white, but I got the impression that a “congressman” like him was connected and could solve a variety of problems, most likely only requiring appropriate amounts of grease to be applied to the appropriate squeaks.

Knowing that my visit could have a certain impact on Ashraf, I lauded his abilities and attention to us to Prakash, and, even though he was not present in the room, Ashraf seemed to sense that I’d given him a big thumb’s up, because he was positively ebullient on the drive home, stopping at a street vendor’s stand to buy us each a Vada Pao, a spicy fried lentil and potato patty stuffed into a bun.

Taj Mahal, India

On Monday before sunset we arrived in Agra. Because we had shown such an affinity for Agra sweets back in Pushkar, without asking Sanju stopped at an Agra sweets store run by a friend of his. Feeling we had let him down by not buying any jewelry in Jaipur, we didn’t even bother to bargain when the shop owner stuck it to us - $40 for four boxes of dried pumpkin.

We were booked in another upscale hotel in Agra, and we repeated the same drill there that had taken place at each of the hotels on our stay. The checkin person always asked for both of our passports, made copies of the information page and the Indian Visa page, then pulled out a huge, multi-part ledger book and entered hand-written answers to the same series of questions: 1) What city did you just come from? 2) What city will you visit next? 3) How long have you been in India? 4) When will you leave India?

I have no idea if anyone is collating this information or trying to make any sense of it, but it’s a form of Homeland Security snooping meant to make sure that non-Indians are properly credentialed and not overstaying their visas. When we first checked into our hotel in Udaipur on day one of this trip, our hotelier thought he had scored big when he noticed that Peggy was visiting way beyond the expiration date on her visa. His eyes got big, he said something in Hindi to his associate that included the English words “expired visa”. I realized immediately what was going on so I gently informed him that Peggy had two visas in her passport – the old one from her trip last year and the new, unexpired one for this trip. He was disappointed I suppose, but I think he was relieved as well. The bureaucracy he would have had to endure had he really caught a visa-violator would have been intense.

They say the Taj Mahal is beautiful on a full moon night. Lucky us, we were in Agra, the home of the Taj, on a full moon night. Unlucky us, our Indian travel agent had apparently not deduced that this rare and beautiful event would be of interest to us, so he had failed to procure night-time tickets and our hotel concierge strongly assured us that all tickets for night time viewing were gone.

Tuesday morning came early. We were up at 5:15 am, out the front door at 5:45, but Sanju was no where to be seen. The gates around our hotel were locked, but the doorman let us out onto the street, then ominously relocked the gates behind us. It was still quite dark, but there already were a few touts milling about. Being so early, none of the rickshaw or taxi drivers was that aggressive and when it became obvious that we had a driver on the way to pick us up, one of the touts directed us to a tiny tea stand under a dim street light. There were a few souls gathered round, so we each had a cup of the hot, spicy, milky, sweet tea they call Masala Chai. At 10 rupees each, the tiny cups seemed like a bargain. The fellow who had encouraged us to have a cup spoke pretty good English and he seemed interested that we were from the USA. Agra is used to lots of tourists, but Americans are still a real minority here.

Sanju arrived and our guide, a Muslim Indian named Iqbal, was there by 6:00 am. Our goal was to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise. Which we did. What a ho hum place! I can’t believe that anybody raves about the Taj, becaus….

You’re probably not buying this and you shouldn’t. Like practically every one of the millions of tourists who have visited the Taj over the years, we were floored by its colors, grace and architectural perfection.

The story of the Taj Mahal is probably well known, but just for quick reference, it was built over a period of 21 years by a work force of 20,000 men. Started in 1632 by Shah Jahan, the Muslim ruler of much of India at that time, it is a mausoleum and a mosque, but mostly a testament to love. It was built to honor the final resting place of the Shah’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died shortly after giving birth to her fourteenth child. The complex is made of marble, with lots of inlaid semi-precious gems, copious use of gold and many artistic, but geometric and symmetric, carvings. The Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, described it as “a teardrop on the face of eternity”. Beyond that words are pretty inadequate. Like most tourists today, I shot dozens of photos from many different angles, and to look back at them and see the subtle color differences as the sun rose higher in the sky, is a testament to the unearthly quality the white marble edifice exhibits.

Shah Jahan lived to see the Taj Mahal completed, but shortly thereafter he was deposed by his son, Aurangazeb, and held under house arrest at the Agra Fort, supposedly gazing wistfully at the Taj until his death in 1666. His body was interred alongside his beloved wife in the Mausoleum that is the major structure in the complex.

After the Taj, Iqbal suggested we go see the Fort but we had already seen more forts on this trip than even Davy Crockett would have tolerated, so we begged off. Which gave Iqbal just the opportunity he needed to take us to a “demonstration” of how they make inlaid marble tables in Agra. This demonstration took place in a large showroom that was, miraculously, empty of any customers save us. The 36 second demonstration was very educational, and I assumed that we would continue with our “wow that’s interesting, thanks for showing us but we have to be leaving now” routine that we had more or less perfected since our first stop at the miniature painting factory in Udaipur. I was definitely on this track, but Peggy almost immediately fell in love with the marble tables on display. The panic level in my body zoomed upward when she started asking for pricing. And when it became obvious that she was pretty serious about buying a table and having it shipped to our home in Colorado, I feigned a heart attack. I didn’t really do that, but I was trying to think of some way to get us out of there without having to call Fannie Mae to ask for a mortgage on the house.

Luckily, they didn’t have exactly the table Peggy was envisioning – she wanted an octagonal, off-white marble, with very delicate inlay all around the perimeter but nothing in the center. The sales team (which had grown larger and more expectant as our intentions seemed to be ratcheting upward) was now pushing for us to have a table custom made. There were all sorts of assurances about how we would only have to put 25% down and we would get detailed pictures of the finished product before we had to pay the balance and the shipment would be insured and we wouldn’t have to pay any import duty and blah, blah, blah.

The pricing we were working from was so high that I didn’t feel like any amount of bargaining would get us into a price range that felt like anything other than grand larceny. As had been true of other visits to “factory stores” on this trip, the sales guys worked pretty hard to keep the two marks (Peggy and me) from talking to each other. I’m sure if we had asked for a moment to discuss things they would have given it to us, but that is such a buying signal that I didn’t want to give them more incentive to work us to death. But I did manage to whisper to Peggy that a round trip flight to Agra would cost us only $120 each, so we should do some research first and come back when we had a better idea of the real value of these things. I have to admit that the dozens, if not hundreds, of tables they had on display were stunning and would look awesome in our breakfast nook, but I was not convinced that we could get to a price that would feel good to us.

So we namasted our way out of there, which is very difficult to do, because in these situations the shopkeeper expects you to name a price so they have something to work with. They know what the street vendors know – unmitigated persistence can wear down all but the heartiest of resistors.

We did manage to extricate ourselves, but the hook was set. When Iqbal suggested he could take us to yet another marble factory store, but this one smaller and cheaper, we both agreed. We had a short conversation outside the car confirming that we were just looking, because we were going to do some research at our leisure and come back to Agra when we knew better what we should pay for one of these stunning works.

But when they showed us a deep green marble table with beautiful inlay around the perimeter as well as in the center, surprisingly, I was the one who crumbled. Peggy already had decided that she wanted one of these tables, so when my resolve turned to blatant desire, the game was on.

We bargained hard, even getting into the car to leave before the final offer, conveyed to us through the open car window, was sufficiently reasonable (in our view) to be acceptable. And so it came to pass that we now own a table that costs more than it originally cost Shah Jahan to build the Taj Mahal. I have no idea if that claim is true, but it’s based on the rule of 72, which helps you determine how long it takes for something to double in value at a consistent compound interest rate. If we assume that the cost of living has risen by 5% per year since 1632 (the year the Taj was started), $1000 spent back then would be worth $134 billion today. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing the Taj could be built today for under $134 billion.

At any rate, as I was signing the many oh-boy-we-bought-a-table forms, all in carbon-paper triplicate, Peggy spied a beautiful green marble tray filled with intricate inlay. She grabbed it, compared it to our table and said “I want this too!”. Oh oh! She had forgotten rules one and two of bargaining in India. Rule one is don’t show any obvious interest in the item you want to buy. Rule two is don’t offer to buy an item before you know how much they want for it. When I looked at the price tag on the back, I blanched – it was over $1000. The owner saw my reaction and said, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to pay that much.” We were out of bargaining energy so we just meekly agreed to his reduced price.

Iqbal was a happy guide when we dropped him near his two-wheeler. Our visit to Agra was over, and we were on the downward slide from our blast through Rajasthan. Sanju found the road to Delhi, drove for two hours and stopped at one of the many Indian-food-for-tourists restaurants that are so prominent in the heavily visited parts of the country.

We had Paneer something or other (big curds of cottage cheese in tomato sauce), and Aloo Mutter (potatoes and peas in a spicy gravy) along with Naan bread. Peggy needed a restroom break before we climbed back into the car for our final push to Delhi. I handed her a 10 Rupee note to take with her. Milton Friedman did not coin the phrase “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, but he did write a book with that title. As far as I know, I can claim ownership of this one: “In India, there’s no such thing as a free pee.” Even rest rooms that don’t have official attendants on duty usually have a sharp entrepreneur or two hanging around the sink offering you napkins to dry your hands with the very clear understanding that you will reward said guy or gal with a 10 rupee note.

Shocking news from Delhi – there must be a helmet law there, because 90% of the operators of two wheelers were sporting them. Traffic was abysmal but Sanju tooted and nerfed his way to the airport so we could fly back to Pune.

Once in the airport we checked in and sat down for a cup of Chai Masala tea. A young man sat down next to us with what looked like a huge, crispy burrito on his plate. Peggy asked what it was and he explained it was a south Indian specialty called a Dosa. We embarked on a very pleasant conversation with this young fellow whose name we eventually learned is Rajan. He’s a newly minted lawyer with a master’s degree from Norwich (in England). He is planning to start his own Intellectual Property business, but is currently working as law consul for his father’s tobacco business in Nagpur, a town in far northeastern Maharashtra state.

We picked his brain on as many Indian mysteries as we could think of, including where to see tigers. Amazingly, he was scheduled to visit Nanha National Park the very next day with a friend for the express purpose of seeing tigers. His subsequent email reports to us confirmed sightings of tigers in the wild at Nanha, so that location is going on our list of places to see before our stay here concludes.

Our flight landed at close to 11:00 pm in Pune, and there was faithful Ashraf to pick us up and take us back “home”. I had already started to come down with a cold and had managed to pick up some sort of skin rash as well. Our homecoming would perhaps not be as blissful as we hoped.

Pix:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622689174945/

Amber Fort, India

Sunday afternoon in Jaipur. It was past lunch time and we were hungry so we asked to be taken to the Peacock Rooftop Restaurant, an eatery recommended by Rough Guide that was located on the roof of the Hotel Pearl Palace. Kamesh directed Sanju through the city streets to a restaurant called the Peacock Restaurant, which was clearly located at street level, not on a rooftop. I tried to convince Kamesh that this was not the place we were looking for, but he assured me it was the only restaurant in town that had Peacock in its name and furthermore there was a hotel somewhere in the vicinity so it had to be the right place.

We acceded and ended up having a decent lunch, but subsequent checking on the Internet provided proof positive that the Peacock Rooftop Restaurant is completely different from the Peacock Restaurant. Unfortunately, because we really enjoyed being with him, this was another strike against Kamesh.

Strike three happened when we told Kamesh that we wanted to buy another suitcase because it had become clear that all the loot we were scoring was going to overwhelm the one bag we brought with us. Kamesh took us to the best shop in town where we were shown Verage roll-on bags that started at 5000 Rupees and, according to our vociferous shop keeper, were not made in China.

I had now wised up sufficiently to realize that this was yet another opportunity for Kamesh to get a commission, so I concocted a story about needing to do a trial packing before we selected which size bag we would need. The shop keeper did his best to make a sale, but I surreptitiously wrote down the model numbers of the bags we were looking at and “promised” we would be back the next morning to make our selection.

We went back to the hotel for dinner, and having now had our hearts broken by a guide who seemed to be too good to be true, and who proved to be just that, we repaired to the bar for some salve. Glancing through the English language India Times newspaper, we were taken in by three things: a huge want ad section called “Matrimonials – for the better half of your life”, a news story about doctors in Mumbai being arrested for performing ultrasounds on pregnant women, and a story about the Pushkar Camel Fair.

The Matrimonials section was a fascinating glimpse at how prevalent arranged marriages still are, how bottom line oriented many of the arrangers are, and how clearly modern methods, like paid newspaper ads, were being applied to this centuries-old cultural mainstay. Some of the ads seemed contrarian, like this one: “Wanted, beautiful homely girl…”. We saw the homely phrase often enough to finally realize it was being used to mean someone who preferred to be a homemaker rather than a career woman.

The ultrasounds story was fascinating as well. Neither of us remembers exactly which law the doctors broke – it was either a law that completely bans performing ultrasounds on pregnant women or a law that does not prohibit ultrasounds but bans revealing the sex of the child to the parents after an ultrasound is performed. And why would there be a provision like this? Because of the fear, based on a multitude of very real occurrences, that the parents would choose to abort the fetus, or even worse, kill it at birth, if the child being carried was female. To many, including most of the poor and lower middle classes, having a son is a ticket to prosperity while having a daughter dooms them to an even deeper level of poverty. At weddings, the female’s family must provide a worthy dowry which is distributed to the boy’s entire family. This redistribution of wealth and poverty is still very much alive and well in India.

The article about the Camel Fair was disappointing, because the gist of it was how poorly camels had sold this year and also how poorly attended the fair was. We had heard estimates from others in the travel industry in India that tourism was down 40-50% this year, due to the world-wide recession and swine flu concerns. Pushkar had experienced a similar decline in tourism as well.

Camel prices were off too. Whereas in the past camels started at 20,000 Rupees and went up to 40,000 or so ($400 to $800), this year camels were selling for as little as 10,000 Rupees, and many camels were going unsold. It was heart-breaking to read about very poor farmers who were claiming they were going to simply abandon unsold camels because they could no longer afford the $2.00/day per camel required to keep them fed. I wish we had met farmers like that because we would have gladly given one of them a few hundred dollars to keep his camel in feed for a few more months.

After drinking and commiserating, we decided a chocolate bar was all we needed for dinner so we slipped out the back gate of our fancy hotel and tried to find a store that sold real chocolate. As we were bashing about we happened to see a luggage store featuring none other than Verage bags (remember those from Kamesh’s stop earlier in the day?) As it turns out, despite the earlier shopkeeper’s claim that these bags were not made in China, they ARE in fact made in China. And the specific bag that shopkeeper A wanted 5000 Rupees for was going for a much more modest 2000 Rupees at this shop. We bought the bag on the spot, congratulated ourselves and re-realized that Kamesh, as much as we enjoyed his company, was just another commission-seeking guide steering us way astray when it came to commerce.

Monday came and we had one of our most fun mornings of the trip. Kamesh and Sanju took us to the base of the Amber Fort, one of Jaipur’s major attractions, where we jumped into a large line of tourists being pestered by dozens of trinket sellers. This line was waiting for elephant rides to the top of the cliff on which the fort is built.

The wait was surprisingly short given the size of the line, but watching the operation it became clear that there were in the neighborhood of 100 elephants, each with a Mahout (elephant jockey) on top, and each swaying up the hill with one or two tourists on her back (all of the taxi-elephants were females). We got aboard and it was just a kick to wallow our way up the hill in a long convoy of elephants, brushing against an equally long convoy of elephants waddling down the hill to pick up their next loads.

I don’t know how happy the elephants are to earn their living this way every day of the week, but it made us very happy to be conveyed in such a regal fashion.

In the fort we were treated to yet another snake charmer/cobra show, something that is almost as fascinating to me as camels and elephants. From what I’ve been able to determine, these snakes really are mesmerized by the sound and movement of the snake charmer’s flute and if a cobra is discovered in a metropolitan location in India, a snake charmer is called in to put the snake into a trance so it can be safely basketed and removed. They do not destroy the snakes, but rather take them deep into the jungle and let them go.

While sitting in the Amber Fort, absorbing yet more fortly ambiance, I asked Kamesh where to see tigers. He started rattling off names of the top national parks in India, always calling them “centuries”. I was curious why he called each of these national parks a century, but I never found the right opportunity to ask him to clarify so it remained a mystery, at least for a few hours.

While we were lumbering up the hill on elephants earlier in the day, there were a bunch of guys taking photos of the convoys as they went by. This was the equivalent of the photographers at marathons or Disneyland who take your picture then offer to sell you the printed results a little later in the day. Apparently you have to be named Ali to be a photographer here, because we were shot by three separate photographers, and every one of them yelled “See Ali when you’re done!”

We had no interest in tracking any photographers down, but one of them found us just as we were getting into the car. He wanted 100 Rupees per print, but our feigned disinterest got him down to 50, so we bought the four best shots.

Sanju gunned the car out of the fort and we were completely at the bottom of the approach hill when a motorbike overtook us and waved us over. Somehow, another one of the Ali’s had noticed us leaving and sent a motor-wallah after us. He had 12 photos of us, asking 100 Rs each. We liked 4, offered him 50 Rs each, which he at first refused, so I handed them back and told Sanju to drive on at which point he immediately agree to sell the entire batch for 500. I offered him 300 total which he said was too low, but as I told Sanju to drive on once again, he shoved the photos in the window, I gave him 300 and the deal was done.

Before turning us loose, Kamesh made one last attempt to direct us to one of his commission-awarding shops, which we were able to nimbly deflect. As his final guiding act, he suggested we stop at the edge of the lake in town to take pictures of the Lake Palace. This was obviously a minor tourist attraction, because there were only 3 or 4 vendors there and only three pathetic women beggars, each with a small, very pitiful looking child on her hip. I had developed a pretty good strategy for fending off vendors in the elephant ride line, mainly by hearing the offering price then looking the guy straight in the eye and saying, “You’re joking, right?” I tried the same technique at this location and it seemed to work, but the wailing and gnashing of the beggar women was not to be fended off – except by some miraculous Hindi words from Kamesh.

Kamesh convinced the women to stand down while he briefly explained the raison d’etre of the Lake Palace, but as soon as he stopped his lecture, the women went right back into their acts. He wanted to take photos of us (in our oh-so-indigenous-looking fake turbans) with the Palace in the background. Once again a few choice Hindi words not only stopped the begging but convinced the women to move away so the photo would contain only us. During the 30 seconds that our photo shoot went on, the three women talked among themselves, clucked over our appearances and even giggled a little when they looked at our dorky looking turbans. It was very interesting to see how civilized, warm and human these women could be when they were told to take a break from their jobs. When Kamesh finished our pix, the women gathered around us, asking to be included in a photo. We knew this would cost us a few Rupees, but I was OK with that, so I told Kamesh to proceed. As soon as those photos were finished, the women went immediately back into character, pleading, whining and crying about how poor and needy they and their children were. I gave them each 10 Rupees, and they continued their role-playing until Sanju drove away with us safely sequestered in the back seat.

Before our final escape from Jaipur, Sanju, the only apparent friend we had in the entire state of Rajasthan, proved to us that he was merely Indian as well. He asked if he could take us to a jewelry shop run by a friend of his. We wearily agreed, but all I could think as he wended our way to his friend’s shop was “Et tu, Sanju, et tu?”

At the jewelry store we were shown some beautiful sapphires from Ceylon and a few outstanding, and very expensive, sapphires that supposedly came from Kashmir. This particular jeweler really seemed to know his stuff, but his claim that the very best sapphires come from Kashmir was news to Peggy, who has her own well-cultured jewelry chops.

We looked long enough to be polite, refused the inevitable offer of tea, and left with a slightly disappointed looking Sanju once again fighting his way eastward against all sorts of traffic hassles. We were scheduled to stop at the abandoned fort known as Fatehpur Sikri, but our fort fun factor was pegged, so we just directed him to keep driving when the turn off to Fatehpur arrived.

On we went until Sanju pointed vaguely to the right and said “World Century”. We didn’t know what the heck he was talking about, but that word “century” had been used earlier by Kamesh when he was trying to explain where we should go to see tigers. Aha! I finally got it. Century = Sanctuary. And when Sanju announced that we were driving by the “World Century”, he was really trying to tell us that we were passing the world famous Bird Sanctuary known as Keoladeo National Park.

I was extremely non-plussed by the “betrayal” I felt when it turned out that Sanju was not our protector after all. Peggy is not nearly as affected by this type of thing and she was still feeling relatively sanguine about our soon-to-completed Rajasthani tour so she innocently asked me where I wanted to go on our next touristic foray. With my spirits down, I answered as truthfully as I could – “Switzerland!” At that moment I wanted order and integrity above all else and Switzerland seemed like the perfect antidote to India.

Pix of lots of elephants:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622787316222/

elephant ride video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zL6XWTYAGs

another elephant ride video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQccJGklbcs

Jaipur, India

As you may recall, on the last day of October in 2009 we were at the Pushkar Camel Fair, about to be taken through a Hindu Pilgrim ceremony. Our guide started by making sure we were well aware that coughing up a few Rupees in exchange for this privilege was de rigueur. With that, he took us down to Pushkar Lake. When you see Pushkar Lake in photos, it looks awesome – bright blue water ringed by temples and ceremonial Ghats (gates) all adorned with bright ribbons and thousands of luminescent yellow marigolds. When you see Pushkar Lake in person on October 31, 2009, you see a marshy dry lakebed teeming with trash, with only a few puddles of water here and there. Around the erstwhile shore of the missing lake were 5 or 6 cement pools filled with brackish water in which Hindu pilgrims were bathing as part of the Puja.

A Puja is a mini-ceremony in which you recite some prayers, sprinkle rose and marigold petals on the water and have some holy lake water sprinkled on your head. Peggy and I, as far as we know, are not Hindus, but for some miraculous reason, we were invited to do a Puja at Pushkar Lake. Because all of the money collected from said non-Hindus is diverted to the poor, the lame and the widowed (except for certain donations which I’ll get to), it can’t possibly have anything to do with enriching the dozens of Brahman “priests” or their “volunteer” pledge collectors, so I guess it’s just because the happy people of Pushkar love spreading the joy of Hinduism that they allow us outsiders to take the Puja.

Our guide book fairly warned us that part of the ritual would be an attempt to guilt us into giving a lot of money, but we felt we were strong enough to stand up to the pressure, so we forged ahead. Our Rough Guide said a fair amount to pay for a Puja was 51 Rupees (the odd number is for luck), so that is the amount I was planning to donate.

Our priest, a scruffy young man in a dirty white robe, sloshed a little water from one of the pools into a small metal urn, then sat us down on the steps above one of the pools to take us through the ceremony. He said lots of uplifting things about Hinduism, reminded us for the umpteenth time that all money collected there was given to the poor, the lame and the widowed, then held our hands and asked us to repeat Hindi phrases after him. This was an impossible joke. We couldn’t understand any of the words and our pathetic attempts to imitate his sounds were laughable. At one point the phrases “papa ooh maw maw” and “ram a lam a ding dong” started going through my head and I almost started saying those things instead of the sounds he was asking us to repeat, but I knew we would both burst out laughing if I did, so I just kept trying to go with the flow: “O wha”, “ta goo”, “siam” (say those phrases over and over very quickly and you’ll probably feel just like I did).

Finally our holy dude told us to make a wish for our family and friends while he recited the last chant for us. I thought about taking this seriously and wishing for peace, health and prosperity for all my family members and friends (which is what Peggy did), but I felt so used that all I could do was pray that this farce would end soon.

The chanting finally stopped and we were told to deposit the props used for the Puja (marigolds, colored powders and sweets) into what appeared to be a garbage can. Normally this stuff is sprinkled over the waters of Lake Pushkar as the Puja is being performed, but as I’ve already reported, Lake Pushkar is now Dry Swamp Pushkar, and apparently Puja biz is booming to the extent that the amount of tourist Puja Paraphernalia would overwhelm the small pools that contain water, so into the dumper goes our holy relics. We were rewarded with red smudged tilakas on our foreheads and we did get to keep the holy strings, which were tied around our wrists. These are filaments, supposedly harvested from Temple flags, usually in hues of red and orange, that almost every Hindu wears. They’re the equivalent, and then some, of the plastic yellow Live Strong bracelets that many people in the US sport. Our strings were ongoing testaments to the reality that we had performed Puja.

Thankfully, we were almost done, but we did yet have to face the bill collectors. Our “priest” took us to these guys who had very official looking receipt books using three part carbon paper (journal books with multi-part carbon paper are all the rage in India, even in places where everything appears to be computerized) and they asked us to write down our particulars and then make a pledge that would be collected on the spot. As noted, our guide claimed that a pledge of 51 Rupees is quite common. Given the high pressure we’d already been subjected to by our guide and our “priest” I figured I better up the ante a little. Our “priest” had earlier made suggestions that ranged into the thousands of Rupees. I wasn’t going there, but I figured 101 Rupees had a nice ring to it. But when I wrote that number onto the multi-part pledge form I got such sour looks from the accountants and “priest” alike I knew it wasn’t going to fly. They pointed at a very professional looking sign on the wall that listed recommended pledge amounts. I didn’t bother to read any of it beyond the minimum number I saw which was 201 Rupees. So I pledged that amount, Peggy was more or less forced to do the same, I produced the appropriate amounts and started backing away when priest-boy stuck out his hand and said something that I don’t remember but caused me to reach into my wallet for another 100 Rupee note which seemed like a pretty cheap “get out of jail” card at that point.

I hope the whole odd number of Rupees for good luck thing works inversely because I gave him an even number. A big element of the Hindu religion is the concept of Karma, which is sort of a life-long accounting of your good and bad works which get added up after your demise to determine what type of entity you get to be re-incarnated as. I’m not sure which Hindu god acts as the CPA in this regard, but I am convinced that none of the shysters who extort money from tourists with phony religious rituals are going to get return tickets that are much better than dung beetle or banana slug.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against the Hindu religion. I don’t understand it, but it’s probably every bit as good as any of the other major religions. My problem is with the practitioners who have subverted and perverted it in ways that I doubt Brahma had in mind when he took Hinduism public many thousands of years ago.

Having not enjoyed our interlude with guide Ashok to any great degree, we let him speed-walk us back to our car, gave him a 100 Rupee tip, thanked him (with dripping sarcasm that felt so good to me but I know was wasted on him) for all he taught us about the Hindu faith, answered his predictable question about whether or not we were happy with big smiles, then took off in search of other adventures at the Pushkar Camel Fair. We bargained hard, ate more Agra Sweets, rode two-up on a camel’s back and enjoyed the trappings of a busy carnival evening.

One of the more interesting, but very disconcerting, activities going on at the camel fair was the collecting, sorting, stacking and selling of the camel and cattle dung that was being deposited at world record levels all over the fair grounds. The collecting was done by a variety of Indians, but Peggy was very disturbed to see the high proportion of young girls who were participating in this task. Her very valid point was “Why aren’t those girls in school?” (For the hyper detail oriented and observant amongst us, I should report that Saturday is a school day in India). The dung is sold to the very poor at presumably exceedingly low prices to be used as cooking and heating fuel. There are lots of things about being dreadfully poor that are not appealing, but heating my house with poop would probably have to be one of the worst.

Back at our hotel, we were amazed to hear yet more Kenny G coming out of the Muzak system. Kenny G is such a mainstay at Indian hotels that I’ve finally concluded his real name must be Kenny Gupta. Dinner that night included the best mutton sausage of the trip to date and a wonderful local desert that had enough butter, cream and sugar in it to raise our blood sugar into dangerous territory.

On Sunday morning, after breakfast, I called for a bell-wallah to carry our bag up to the office so we could check out. As we were strolling peacefully along the path to the office, another bell-wallah came up and asked for the key to our room. I knew what he was charged to do – he had to go count the items in the mini-bar, because I assume an India Wide Tourist Alert had been issued to all hotels instructing them to be on the lookout for a certain American who was trying to score free Pringles everywhere he went.

Later that day, on our drive to Jaipur, we had another great driving adventure. We came to a stretch of the two-lane highway where both shoulders were parked full of trucks for a long distance. It just so happened that our lane crawled to a stop at that point. Sanju craned his neck to see if anything was coming in the other lane, but there was a long line of nose to tail traffic in front of us, and he was afraid of getting out in the oncoming lane only to find traffic coming with no place to duck into. But within seconds a large truck went by in that lane (going in our direction which means the wrong way for that lane), followed almost immediately by a passenger bus and then a minivan. That was all Sanju needed. He jumped in behind the minivan because we now had a little convoy that had totally commandeered the wrong lane! We passed 15-20 trucks before we ground to a halt – oncoming traffic had materialized and they were not happy. So those of us in our little convoy just slowly nosed our way back into our own slow moving lane, feeling ever so smug about the minute or so we had saved on our 5 hour commute to Jaipur.

Jaipur is the handicraft capital of Rajasthan, which itself is the handicraft capital of all of India. In Jaipur they make block print textiles, wood carvings, brass castings, clothing, jewelry, rugs and pottery.

We met our guide, Kamesh, Sunday afternoon, and he was a pleasant improvement over his brethren with whom we had not been overly pleased so far. His English was excellent, his knowledge of tourist attractions in Jaipur superb and he was warm and funny to boot. Finally, we thought, we have found a guide who just wants to attend to us rather than try to divert us to local shops where he can score a commission off anything we buy.

He started by taking us to the Jantar Mantar, which is one of the coolest things we saw on our sweep through Rajasthan. The Jantar Mantar contains 18 huge stone astronomical devices constructed by Jai Singh in the 18th century. These instruments not only tell the time of day (to within 2 seconds accuracy), they also were used to support intricate calculations of astrological signs, helping the local practitioners determine the most auspicious times for weddings, celebrations and bowel movements.

Although the end result of the Jantar Mantar instruments was the somewhat questionable “science” of astrology, the astronomical underpinnings that were represented there appealed to our nerdy, scientific senses.

When we left the Jantar Mantar we were entertained by a couple of snake charmers coaxing their cobras into the hypnotic, weaving dance that seems so trite when you see it on TV, but which is absolutely marvelous when you see it in person.

Next we visited the City Palace, in the center of Jaipur which is commonly called the Pink City. Why it’s called that remains a mystery to us, because almost all building in Jaipur are a reddish rust color. Apparently someone somewhere decided that color was called Pink in the English language, so the inaccurate description has stuck.

There was another really cool thing at the city palace, two things actually. There were two large silver urns on display there, each with a capacity of 8182 liters. It seems that an heir to the dynasty in this region, one Madho Singh II went to London in 1901 for the coronation if King Edward VII. But, like tourists even today, he was worried about the effects the local water would have on his delicate system, so he had these urns made and actually hauled many thousands of liters of water from the Ganges (which today would make your stomach turn) on the trip to England with him so he wouldn’t have to drink the foul water in England. Bottled water is an older concept than I would have imagined.

We were so enjoying the refreshingly open nature of Kamesh’s guiding style that our guard was down when he had Sanju stop at a Rajasthan crafts market. Our guard went quickly up again when we noticed that we were the only customers in a three story structure crammed with all sorts of knickknacks. We looked at miniature paintings (Naveen from Udaipur had already scored our commission on that item), Punjabi Dresses and carved elephants, which I had taken a strong liking to a day or two earlier. We let our hosts tip their hand by slyly offering to provide “better” pricing (this at a supposedly fixed price store) but we were in no mood to buy anything at this location. Our belief that Kamesh was a shining knight in a land of villains took its first hit.

Pix here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622773921922/

Pushkar Camel Fair

On Saturday morning we got a lesson in how seriously Indian hotels treat their mini bars. The fact that almost all the hotels we stayed in on this trip had mini bars was a wonder in itself. The additional fact that in all but one of these mini bars there was nothing you would associate with a bar (i.e. no alcohol) was also fascinating.

When we had arrived at the Plaza Park Hotel the previous Thursday afternoon we went on a mini bar binge, eating 2 chocolates, 1 pack of cookies and a small can of Pringles and drinking one coke. When we returned to the hotel on Friday after our day of touristing, I noticed that everything had been replaced, EXCEPT for the can of Pringles. That made me suspicious, so I made a mental note of it (I can only keep one mental note at a time, so my complete plan for World Peace, which I’m pretty sure would have worked, had to be jettisoned).

Our punctuality in meeting Sanju in the morning had so far been less than stellar, so we tried really hard to get to the car by 8:30 am that morning. But silly me, I left only 5 minutes for checkout. As I sat waiting for the receptionist to tally my bill so I could pay and leave, I was asked to fill out an evaluation form on our stay at the hotel. This, we had and would continue to discover, was something that every hotel and many restaurants pushed very aggressively for you to do. And they would stand there watching you fill it out demonstrating very expectant body language. Our stay had been quite nice so I gave them Excellents and Goods in most categories, leaving checkout experience unmarked (since I hadn’t completed that yet), but rewarding them with an overall Excellent (the highest mark).

The attendant kept assuring me that the bill would be ready soon, then he would furtively speak in Hindi to someone on his walkie-talkie. I was pretty sure they had sent a Bell- wallah up to count the items in our mini bar. We had consumed only a bottle of club soda since the day before, a fact that I had duly reported to the checkout guy. But Indian hotels have apparently been victimized by mini-bar scofflaws so often that they were taking no chances with anyone as shady looking as me.

Finally, many minutes, many “how much longer will this take?” requests from me and many assurances that it would be one minute more, I was presented with a bill and the great Pringles Misunderstanding consumed the next 10 minutes of my life. There was a mini bar charge from the day before that looked about right given the binge we went on. But the most recent mini bar charge, 130 Rupees, seemed high for one bottle of club soda. So I asked to see the detail on that charge. My decision to dump world peace in order to register the missing Pringles restocking was rewarded when I spied a charge for one can of Pringles on the morning bill.

We then proceeded to argue two completely separate cases for the next 10 minutes. I kept insisting that we had not eaten a second can of Pringles and they were mistakenly charging me for a can that they had carelessly not replaced the day before. Unknown to me, the hotel guy was arguing that they had not charged us for the Pringles the day before, but rather had left that item unstocked and then charged us for it the next day. I say unknown to me because no matter how clearly they explained their case, it was in such stultified English that it made no sense. Luckily, just as I was getting red faced, Peggy came in to see what was taking so long, and, quickly looking at all the documentation, she discovered the reality (they didn’t charge us the day before and had posted it this morning) and convinced me to pay the bill and leave. Which I did. But I demanded they return my evaluation form so I could mark a big “Poor” on my checkout experience and change my previous overall mark from Excellent to Poor. And from that moment on, word went out to all hotels in India that there was an American tourist running a new type of mini bar scam to try to get away with a free can of Pringles. The mini bar threat level in India was raised to red and security on mini bars throughout the entire country was beefed up overnight.

Luckily, we were on our way to Pushkar, the gem attraction in our week long adventure, and the prospect of thousands of camels prancing in the desert gave leave of the bad feelings from checkout.

Pushkar is home to the largest camel fair and camel auction in the world. It happens once a year, culminating on a full moon evening that is tied to the Hindu calendar (which is different from ours). We would be there a few nights before the full moon, when the spectacle should be in full swing. And it was amazing when we finally arrived in Pushkar. There were some distinct similarities to Sturgis, the big motorcycle rally in South Dakota that we used to attend before we remembered how uncomfortable conformist crowds are.

Outside of Pushkar there was a temporary toll gate set up. The toll for a car was 30 Rupees. When Sanju paid with a 50 and got no change back, he argued with the toll collectors. They argued back, refused to give him any change and waved him on. He said a few more choice words (in Hindi) then drove on. We asked what had happened and he just smiled and shrugged and said they were collecting an extra 20 for themselves for every car that came through. A very small example, but an example nevertheless of something that is endemic in India – corruption pervades almost everything here.

Culture Shock part 2 started once we hit the center of Pushkar. There were camels, cattle, women in colorful sarees, carnival barkers, hawkers, dogs, farmers, gawkers, tour buses, pilgrims, children and soldiers everywhere. While Sanju tried to simultaneously park the car and find our tour guide, we charged into the fray, not knowing where to go or what to do. We were immediately propositioned with all manner of kitschy goods and cajoled to take camel rides – either in a pulled cart or right on the camel’s back.

Within a few minutes we got a call from our guide, Ashok, and we managed to find our way to the car park area. Having only dipped our toes into the mayhem, we were anxious to get back into the scrum, as we wanted to ride on a camel and we were curious about seeing the actual auction part of the fair. But we were also hungry and Ashok thought it best for us to check into our hotel and have lunch, so that is what we did.

Sanju bashed into the desert outside of Pushkar, and we almost felt transported to Mexico. The dry desert was similar, everybody worked on Manana time, we had to ask three times and get three assurances before anything really happened, we ordered specific items from the menu but were brought whatever our waiter felt was best for us, the air conditioner and fridge in our room did not work, and everybody who worked there pretended to be happy to see us. But when it came to the aggressiveness of the hawkers, that’s when all similarities to Mexico stopped. In India the in-your-face crowd is x-squared more aggressive than anything I’ve ever seen in Mexico.

Once back at the fair, we tried some local candy, called Agra Sweets, which turned out to be dried and heavily sugared pumpkin. Ashok wanted to take us on a camel cart so he could explain the various elements of the carnival that had turned this chunk of desert into a very down-scale county fair. Even though he claimed he wanted to explain things to us, he was way too busy answering his two cell phones and making arrangements with other customers to pay much attention to us. While we jostled through the maze of carnival lanes, two snake charmers approached from the rear, started playing their horns and opened the baskets they were carrying to reveal two cobras, both rising up with necks flared and weaving to the music. That was very cool. Tips were in order, of course, and I didn’t want either of the charmers to decide to toss his snake in my lap to show his displeasure at my generosity, so I gave them each 20 Rupees.

After trundling about in the camel cart for 30 minutes or so while Ashok conducted business on his two phones, he charged off toward the temple on foot, but at breakneck speed. When I encouraged Peggy to step it up so we wouldn’t lose him in the crowd she shot back that we would save our 100 Rupee tip and probably discover more by closing our eyes and chanting “OM” for an hour than we were going to learn from this particular guide.

But she was wrong. It turns out we learned a lot on this meticulous day. Pushkar is a small town with very little going for it, except for a tiny lake in the middle of town, called, appropriately enough, Pushkar Lake, and a major temple to Brahma, the Creator and the first (but not necessarily most loved) god of the Hindu religion. In a nutshell, it seems that Brahma planned to wed Savitri, a goddess herself, and the marriage was scheduled to take place at the most auspicious time on the most auspicious date according to astrological calculations. Astrology is an artifact of the Hindu religion and people here really do schedule major, and many times minor, life events to conform to astrological guidance.

Well, Savitri, like the occasional woman, was late, and Brahma was anguished because he felt he had to marry at exactly the time prescribed, so he grabbed a woman from the crowd, Gayitri of the Gujarat (lowest caste) tribe and had her cleansed by drawing her through the mouth of a cow (who as you know is a sacred entity, and I am not making any of this up). Brahma and Gayitri were married at the exact moment of perfection, but when Savitri showed up she was not happy, demanding to be married to Brahma as his second wife, but then putting a curse on him and predicting that he would not be worshipped like the other Hindu gods and furthermore, that any Hindu pilgrim that ventured to Pushkar would always visit the temple to be built in her name before the one that was built on a lower hill in Gayitri’s honor. And to this day, Hindus who make the pilgrimage to Pushkar always make the long climb up to Savitri’s temple before making the equally long trek up to Gayitri’s.

Because of Savitri’s curse, Hindu’s do not worship Brahma in the same way they do the two other major gods, Vishnu and Shiva. To tell you the truth I’m pretty confused about all this and Ashok could not explain it to me because he was way too busy monitoring his two precious cell phones to actually answer any questions. Still, even though Brahma is lower on the popularity scale than the other two Hindu Dudes, when pilgrims come to Pushkar they always do a Puja in Lake Pushkar in honor of Brahma.

Ashok took us to Brahma’s temple where he used the opportunity to start setting the hook for our upcoming Puja by telling us that all the money donated to the various scams - oops, I mean legitimate charities - in town was used to help the poor, the lame and the widowed. His English wasn’t that great so when he first started down this road I didn’t get it that he was basically saying this – “Hey, you guys are rich, we want lots of your money and we’re going to lay this continuous guilt trip on you until you cough up a bunch of it.”

Lots of camels, lots of colors:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622758873542/

Jodhpur, India

We were laggards in Udaipur on Thursday morning, not rousing ourselves to curbside until 9:30 am. We were in for a long drive, mostly on very narrow, mountainous roads in the back country of Rajasthan. It was tedious in many ways, but what we saw of true country life on the farms and villages of rural India was eye-opening.

Almost immediately I got to learn a little more about the propensity some Indian motorists have for driving on the wrong side of the median on a divided highway. Before we got to the single lane part of the journey, we drove for a short distance on a divided highway and I was surprised to see a bus come careening down an entrance ramp that we were simultaneously careening up. I looked at Sanju, and he just shrugged. It turns out that sometimes drivers go down entrance ramps or come up exit ramps (both of which are theoretically one way in the opposite direction) simply because it seems like an easier thing to do. In either case, they have to drive on the wrong side of the highway for a ways in order to make such a maneuver pay off.

Just as I was marveling at how crazy this behavior is, Sanju screeched to a stop, pulled over and after shaking his head for one moment, began to do something that, prior to India, we’d only seen on very rare occasions in southern Italy and Greece. This was something I assumed I would never be part of in my entire life, but here I was, in a car charging madly in reverse the wrong way on a divided highway. I thought I’d gotten used to incessant honking already, but the cacophony that greeted that particular exercise was deafening.

My main memories of the next few hours of driving on a paved road that was not wide enough for two cars at one time were the colors of the saris worn by the women of Rajasthan, along with the incredibly primitive methods of farming we witnessed. I did not see a tractor until late in the day, but I saw plenty of fields being worked by oxen, lots of loads on carts being pulled by camels or donkeys, waterwheels being turned by teams of oxen, loads of straw, hay, water and milk being carried on the heads of men, women and children, cows herded by children, large flocks of sheep milling about the road, and, in every village, and even on many of the farms, people sitting on their haunches simply staring at the road.

In some ways it all seemed idyllic, but the obvious reality was a whole class of very poor people trying to scratch out a subsistence under very trying conditions.

After a few hours we arrived at the Kumbalgarh fort, which we toured and photographed for an hour or so. The walls of that fort enclose a very large area, and our guide book claimed the wall was still intact and you could walk all 38km of it if you so chose. We did have time to do so on this trip, but it’s something that would be fun to try sometime. The guide book also claimed that you could hike cross country from Kumbalgarh to a large Jain temple complex at Ranakpur, a hike that should take 4-5 hours. Assuming that the guide book is being pretty conservative, that would make the distance between the two places about 25 km.

Sanju told us we would visit Ranakpur next, so I assumed we would be there in 30-45 minutes, given how close Rough Guide claimed the two were to each other. But we drove for an hour and a half, up mountain and down, in and out of jungles, before we finally got to Ranakpur.

Halfway between the two places, in the middle of nowhere, on a road where we had seen precious few vehicles going in either direction, we came upon two kids selling a type of fresh fruit that Sanju could not give us the name for. He stopped, pinched a bud of fruit from one of their samples, decided it was OK, gave it to us to try, we thought it tasted interesting, so I asked him how much I should give the girl. He said 10 Rupees (which is pretty much the going rate for everything in India), but when he handed her the 10 Rupee note, she started screaming at him and even as he accelerated away, she kept running beside the car absolutely screaming at the top of her lungs. I asked Sanju if we should pay her more money, but he just smiled at me and said “Kids!” and finally pulled away from the poor thing.

I’m not sure what that was all about, but it’s becoming more and more clear how fraught with difficulty commerce is in this inscrutable land.

Ranakpur Temple was interesting, but I had already started burning out on Temples, so I can’t tell you much about it except that we had to remove shoes, we were supposed to remove our leather belts, entry was free for people but each camera had to pay 50 Rupees and once inside we were accosted by Jain acolytes who wanted to provide “free” guide services to us. We are much more clever than we look and by this time we had way figured out that “free” implies anything from 10 to 1000 Rupees.

The main Jain temple at Ranakpur, built in 1439, was interesting in that the sacred number 72 was utilized in many of its dimensions. It is 72 yards square, inside are 72 elaborately carved shrines, the main statue is 72 inches tall, and it contains 1440 pillars (72 times 20). The reason for this over-focus on a pretty mundane number is that Mahavira, the founder of Jainism was a very stodgy 72 years of age when he achieved nirvana. This fact gives me some hope, because I sometimes think I have a new religion in me but now I know I can wait another 10 years or so before I have to codify it.

It was way past our lunch time, but Sanju had trouble finding a suitable restaurant for us, finally settling on one that clearly caters only to tourists and served food so bland that I’m guessing that even a person suffering from a double ulcer would have asked for some Tabasco. I convinced the waiter-wallah to bring me an Indian spice sauce and that helped.

The last four hours of our drive to Jodhpur consisted of passing a truck every thirty seconds or so, always into oncoming traffic, with the car always lugging because it was overgeared and with no apparent need for any more acceleration than was necessary to get us back in our lane with inches between us and the oncoming vehicle. This infuriating habit of lugging the engine and failure to accelerate seems to be a trait of private drivers here because Ashraf does the exact same thing.

In Jodhpur Sanju treated us to yet another traffic maneuver I thought I would never be part of by turning onto the wrong side of a divided boulevard and proceeding to drive against traffic for a couple of hundred yards to get to our hotel. This maneuver was in lieu of driving about 100 feet past the hotel and making a U-turn to come back in the proper lane. I don’t know why it was so important for Sanju to do this, but it sure was exciting.

On Friday morning, after our breakfast at the upscale Plaza Park Hotel in Jodhpur, we met Vijay, our guide for the day and a real Lady’s Man, at least according to him. Vijay took us to the Meherangarh Fort, one of the top 41 attractions in all of India according to the Rough Guide. The fort was pretty cool and Vijay was quite knowledgeable, not only about the Fort but about all of Indian history. This fort has a fascinating history that I’ll have to get back to you on.

Unlike many of the attractions we were to visit on our sashay through Rajasthan, this one was still populated mostly by Indian tourists rather than foreign ones, and Peggy got to play her Angelina role once again.

Jodhpur is famous for two things – funny pants and buildings with blue roofs. Looking down at the village from the Fort, it was clear that many of the buildings were in fact an indigo color. Vijay gave us an explanation for this that didn’t make any sense (and therefore I don’t remember), but our two guide books made contrary claims – once said the blue color was thought to deter insects, while the other one claimed it was used to mask the inferior quality of the building materials used in those environs.

As you may recall, we were distressed to discover that guides in India are in complete cahoots with many local businesses (especially local crafts manufacturers). We were determined to circumvent this problem by going to a store we had seen recommended in Rough Guide so Peggy could look at some Salwar Kameezs. If that name does not ring a bell, than how about Punjabi Dress? Still wondering? A Punjabi Dress (more properly called a Salwar Kameez), looks like a pair of pajamas (and in fact is the root of the word “pajamas”, a detail that I had deduced of my own volition and that was later confirmed by extensive Internet research). The outfit consists of a pair of light cloth balloon pants and a tunic top that extends to just above or just below the knee. You can also add a Dupatta to it, which is a long scarf either worn around the neck or, more commonly, wrapped around the head in semi-veil-like fashion. The pants are hilarious to look at when unworn, because the waist is big enough to fit 2-3 normal size women into. Apparently, the gathering effect is part of the fashion statement.

Vijay told us where a great place was for these outfits, but we were suspicious of his motives, so we asked to be taken to Raju’s, our Rough Guide’s suggestion. Vijay shrugged in disappointment, but we were the sahibs, so Raju’s is where we went.

Peggy tried on some of the SKs, and liked two of them. One had to be modified to add sleeves and lengthen the pants. This entire 3-piece ensemble was going for the princessly sum of $12, free alterations included. For some reason, Vijay picked this moment to mutter about how tourists always make mistakes when shopping in Jodhpur. My feeling was that the outfit could disintegrate before Peggy ever got to wear it and it would still be a bargain at $12, but Vijay was itching for a fight, so I asked him why he was so unhappy that we were buying clothes at Raju’s.

He trotted out the old saw about how tourist’s get romanced by these guide books and then make horrible mistakes instead of taking the local guide’s advice on where to shop. I asked how he could possibly do better than $12 for an SK, and he made the bold claim that he knew a place that was better AND cheaper. So we decided to call his bluff.

He had Sanju take us to a place that was not only not open, it was unlit and had no patrons inside. As we had started to deduce, this is a tipoff that the shop is a guides-only place, meaning that the guide is a getting a commission on anything you buy. We’ve heard stories that the guides can get up to 40% (depending on how hard the mark bargains), so the financial incentive to drag us in is great.

The guy who attended to us was very attractive, very smooth and very well spoken with excellent command of the English language. I started by asking him about jodhpurs, the funny pants with big bulges at the hips. These pants were invented by Sir Pratap Singh, the brother of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II, for polo playing, but the style caught on like mad with the British and Jodhpur pants have been de rigueur for the polo- and jet-sets ever since.

Mr. Smooth had some ready-made jodhpurs, but few Indians are my height, so none of them would fit me. He naturally took this as an opportunity to try sell me a pair of custom made jodhpurs that he claimed he could have done and delivered to our hotel within 4 hours. I declined, so serve passed to Peggy. The bottom line of the Vijay challenge was that he lost big time. The quality of items we saw at his tailor shop was only marginally better than at Raju’s, but the pricing was 3-5 times higher. I resisted the temptation to ask him where the units were that were cheaper than the $12 we’d paid at Raju’s, but it was satisfaction enough to walk out without buying anything.

We twisted the knife in by declining Vijay’s favorite restaurant in favor of one called Midtown that was given a high review in Rough Guide.

Midtown was great. Pricing was very modest ($3-4 for a main course) and the food was superb. I had a local specialty called kabuli, which included rice, a variety of grilled vegetables, a spicy Indian sauce and fried bread chunks. We were the only tourists in there, the place populated strictly by locals, including a table of four Indian men who took great interest in us, guessing we were from New Zealand, then Australia before giving up. They were very friendly, but not noticeably bright and with English so poor that our attempts at conversation went unrequited.

That night we went back to Raju’s to pick up the altered suit, and experience some more Mexican-style Manana time estimates, then back to Midtown for dinner where we both ordered Thalis (plates of 6-8 types of veg dishes and sauces) and finally met our match when it came to Indian spiciness. Those dishes were excellent but just a little too hot to be truly enjoyable.

The next day would be Pushkar Camel Fair day, so we went to bed with visions of Camels dancing in our heads.

I'm trying to do a better job filtering the pictures I post:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622622703729/

Udaipur, India (Part 2)

On Wednesday morning we began our adventure in Rajasthan, a state on the western coast of India. Breakfast at the hotel gave me the chance to ponder what the death bowling portion of a cricket match involved, because the local paper was full of talk about Team India’s poor abilities in that particular aspect of the sport.

After breakfast we were greeted by Naveen, our local guide who would try to see to it that we spent lots of money at shops where he would get a nice commission on everything we bought. Oops! My cynicism is showing through. Let me start over. Naveen’s one and only concern was to make sure we saw the best sites in Udaipur, that our every need was attended to, and that nobody in his fair city took any advantage of us whatsoever.

We started at the Jagdish Temple, a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Jagannath, who is somehow related to Vishnu, who is one of the three major gods in the Hindu religion. I still don’t really have any clue about who is who in Hindu, so you’ll have to take it on faith that this was a pretty impressive temple for reasons that someday will become clear to me.

From the temple we walked to the City Palace, which is the main tourist attraction in Udaipur. And it is a very extraordinary place. It’s a soft-stone complex, rising out of the beautiful Lake Pichola, consisting of 11 different palaces built over 300 years by a variety of potentates. All 11 palaces are connected, making for the largest palace in Rajasthan, and the whole massive edifice is quite imposing.

It was becoming pretty obvious to me that I don’t know anything about Indian history and, unfortunately, I’ve discovered I don’t really want to know much more. My brain is on that downward trajectory that requires you to forget 2-3 things for every new thing you learn, so the trade-off is not really that attractive. I guess what I’m really doing is rationalizing the fact that I don’t remember anything Naveen told us while we were touring City Palace.

I do remember this though, Naveen had Sanju stop the car at an art school in Udaipur, and, in what seemed surprising at the time but after recent repetitions has become well understood, we were the only people visiting the art school at that particular time. Had this been just an educational stop, we might have been pleased with the excellent attention visited on us by the proprietor, a guy whom I’ll call P.T. Barnum to protect his innocence.

P.T. took us through an excruciatingly detailed description of miniature painting that lasted a good 24 seconds or so. After this exhausting introduction, he seemed pretty worn out but he was able to rouse himself just long enough to take us to the sales room where we were assured that we did not have to buy anything even as we were plied with rich, steamy Marsala tea, simply because we were his friends.

The paintings he showed us were fascinating, and not being fully cognizant of the game that was being played on us, we succumbed to the oft-repeated claims of the great deals to be had at the place where these excellent works of art were produced and we proceeded to spend a few hundred dollars on three of the most appealing works he showed us.

Even after being subsequently received at another miraculously empty art factory (this one specializing in marble sculptures where we declined to purchase anything) we felt pretty sanguine about the miniature paintings that we had bought.

That satisfaction came crashing to an end at our next stop, the local botanical garden that also happened to have a small crafts market going on nearby. At one of the craft booths a young man tried to sell me some miniature paintings done at one of the local art schools. I smugly asked how much he wanted, expecting to hear the tens of thousands of Rupees our friend P.T. had told us his paintings would command at any shop in the real world. When the young man started at 600 Rupees (and was probably willing to bargain down) it finally dawned on me that we had been set up. In fairness to us, the paintings we bought are of better quality and they’re done on silk rather than the cotton this man was pushing and ours are larger than the ones he showed me, but still, the bottom line is that we probably paid 2-3 X what we should have for those paintings simply because we were taken in by our guide and P.T.

This was a discomforting thought to me. Not because the few hundred dollars we spent are that important, but rather because it was now clear that not only can you not trust any merchant in India, you also cannot trust a guide whom you are paying good money to supposedly look out for your best interests. When Naveen dropped us at a local Indian restaurant for a lunch that was over-priced and under-spiced, and whose entire clientele had skins as white as ours, we realized that we were simply more fodder in the tourist mill.

The one good thing that came out of our lame lunch was the realization that Peggy was in love with the copper clad, stainless steel bowls that are used to serve many dishes in Rajasthan. She asked Naveen where she could buy some, but he apparently had no commission arrangement with anyone who sold practical things, so he just smiled, turned up his palms and said he couldn’t help.

That sealed the deal for us, so we told Sanju to take us back to the hotel because we were done touring. Almost immediately Peggy spotted a shop that appeared to have exactly the type of bowls she was looking for. Sanju had already overshot it, but this is India and he’s a professional driver, so he just put the car in reverse and backed up against traffic until we got to the shop with the bowls. We bought a goodly supply of three or four different types, and we took pleasure in the notion that Naveen had to just stand there galled because he would not get a piece of this action.

He did force one last stop, at a silver jewelry store, on the way back to the hotel. We protested, he insisted, noting that we didn’t have to buy anything, so we blasted through each section with big smiles on our faces saying “no” to everything that was offered for our examination. When we returned to the car in less than 3 minutes with nothing in our hands, Naveen got the hint. He asked if we needed him to accompany us on a boat trip on the lake later that night, I said “nope”, I tipped him $4 and he got out of the car and went on his way.

We resolved then and there that we would not let a guide manipulate us that way again in the future, a resolution we were soon to learn was very difficult to enforce in the cut-throat world of India tourism.

Sanju took us back to the lake where we enjoyed a boat trip around the perimeter and chatted briefly with a European couple (he British, she Belgian) whom we had seen earlier at the no-spice restaurant.

Back at the hotel, we got into a small argument with Sanju. We were planning to have dinner at Ambrai, a Rough Guide recommendation that appeared to be fairly close to our hotel. When I asked the hotel clerk if we could walk there, he said it wasn’t even much of a walk. But when I told Sanju he could have the night off because we would walk to and from the restaurant, he insisted that he had to drive us. I told him we wanted the exercise and he pulled an Ashraf on me by asking if I was unhappy with him. I tried to explain that we were very happy with him, but he was so insistent on driving us to the restaurant that I finally gave in. He did say that it would be OK with him if we walked back.

Ambrai was very pleasant and very popular. We managed to get a table right on the edge of the lake and had a nice dinner with a passable bottle of Indian red wine and some very traditional live Indian music, this time on sarangi (played with a bow but positioned more like a cello than a violin) and tablas. Just as we were contemplating desert, a woman approached us from behind. It was Ruth, the Belgian lady we had met earlier in the day. She and her husband, Graham, were having dinner at the table just behind ours. We agreed to have a cup of tea together when they were done with dinner. And in preparation for that, we asked a young man sitting at the table next to us if we could borrow a chair from his table, and, noticing that he appeared to be eating alone, we asked if he wanted to join us as well.

So we spent a very agreeable hour chatting with a Brit, a Belgian, and Sylvian, the young man from Switzerland. Sylvian was truly traveling alone because he couldn’t talk any of his friends into coming along. He was young and certainly braver than I could have been at any age, but he seemed to be taking whatever India threw at him well in stride.

The chat was pleasant, but the bites I was enduring on my ankles were finally more than I could bear so we walked the three minutes back to our hotel (everyone wondering why Sanju had been so insistent on driving us to the restaurant). Before tumbling into bed, I counted the bites on my ankles and came up with 20+ on each. I assume they were sand fleas or something like that, but it proved again that I am the most delectable morsel on earth when it comes to biting insects. Peggy’s feet, clad in sandals without socks, were no more than 2 or 3 feet from mine during the entire evening, and though I was feasted on some 40 or more times, she received nary a nibble.

Find a manageable number of pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622606510539/