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