Jaipur (days 2 and 3)

Yesterday, Meg and I traveled from Delhi down to the city of Jaipur which was a 4 1/2 hour train ride southwest of Delhi. We took a taxi from our Delhi hotel to the train station and got our first good glimpse at driving in India. Once again, I was amazed at the utter chaos of the situation and even more amazed that this society functions given this level of chaos. All of Indian drivers subscribe to two simple rules: 1) you must have your hand on the horn the entire time you are moving and 2) there are no other rules. It pretty much is a free-for-all between the thousands of cars, motorcycles, scooters, mopeds, auto-rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, bicycles, tractors, pedestrians, dogs, and cows who all use the streets to get from point A to point B. In our 40 minute drive to the train station we drove on fast moving highways, pedestrian crammed street roads, animal filled alley ways, and pothole filled dirt access roads. It is also worth noting that we often found ourselves driving agaist the flow of traffic, which surprisingly received less honking than when we drove with traffic.

The train station was not nearly as crazy as I had anticipated as it was on the outskirts of Dehli and used mostly by the locals. My dad had given me the sage advice to hire a porter at the train station to ensure that you get to the right train. But there were no porters to be found because, apparently, foreigners don't depart from this particular train station. Fortunately there were only two platforms and we found our way in board ok.

We spent the next 4 hours relaxing on the train while the Indian countryside, which consisted of acres of wheat fields, small squarish farm houses, and countless piles of burning trash, passed by outside our window.

Our time in Jaipur was spent visiting various very interesting historical buildings (Amber Fort, City Palace, Albert Hall, Hama Mahal) and negotiating with auto-rickshaw drivers (aka tuk tuk drivers). Negotiating with these guys can be boiled down into the following 11 steps. Step 1 occurs before any words are even spoken; when the driver easily identifies us as "white people". Step 2: we ask "keetna?", which means how much? Step 3: we get our inflated white people price of 250 Rs ($5). Step 4: we divide quote by 10. Step 5: the driver explains to us that the 5 blocks we want to go is actually 20 km. Step 6: we see his untruth and raise him a boldface lie by saying we traveled this same route yesterday for 50 Rs. Step 7: he counters with 150 Rs. Step 8: we perform the "walk away". Step 9: he calls after us that he will take us for 80 ($1.60). Step 10: we counter with 70 ($1.40). Step 11: he accepts, but only because it is slow today. While this negotiation is going on, a swarm of tuk tuk drivers will have assembled around us. This can work either for us or against us in the negotiating process. Sometimes the tuk tuk drivers start negotiating against each other and the price gets driven down to the 70 Rs. quickly. Other times, they collude to keep the price high, which forces us to walk 5 extra steps during the "walk away". After all of this, there is usually one more long and painful Step 12. Step 12 occurs when you realize the driver actually doesn't know where you want to go so he just takes you to the textile shop where he earns 40% commission. All this is very draining, but part of the whole Indian experience.

Tomorrow we are heading to Rishikesh, which is supposedly a more relaxing part of India...but with everything being relative, it probably means something equivalent to getting stuck in a room with flickering fluorescent lights and a smoke alarm with a low battery warning going off intermittently.