Backtracking...

December 29th

At 5 AM in the morning, I took a hot shower. It was the most fantastic shower I have ever experienced. On our drive to Jaipur, we stopped at this wonderful little hotel/restaurant/shopping/park area. I had plain doosa (a pancake type thing) with a hot sauce to dip it in. I also had my first Chai Tea aka Indian Tea. I was splendid.

I realized that my stomach has shrunk immensely since arriving to this country. Eating is hard in India. First, Indians do not eat lunch until 2 pm and dinner is at 9 or 10 pm! Second, one always has to think about the food: Is it safe? Is there meat? What about the water? Etc. lastly, when you see such skinny, malnourished children and people in general, you don’t really see the sense of over-eating. I know that not eating all of my dinner doesn’t guarantee it will feed someone else, but when I look down and see extra fat on my body and absolutely non on the child begging me to buy something from him, I feel like a pig and not too hungry.
After being served by the best waiter in my life the bill came to 120 rupees aka >$2. I had my first experience with a squat toilet, which was surprisingly hard, but much less wasteful then Western toilets. In the shop I bought my first Indian clothing: a kurta (I think?) which is basically a light tunic. It’s beautiful. You will see pictures.

During the car ride I wrote a list of things I saw:
1. Stuck-up looking camels
2. Goats and sheep and shepherds
3. Extreme poverty next to beautiful fields
4. Hard working men and women
5. Happy looking cows and calves
6. Children flying kites on top of buildings and in fields
7. MONKEYS!!!
8. Men bathing outside
9. Men urinating outside
10. India minus the smog
11. Genius ways of building homes out of garbage
12. Pigs and piglets
13. Huge forts
14. ELEPHANTS. Yes, I saw elephants. A lot of them. Eating, working, everything. I seriously almost cried.

The city of Jaipur is absolutely gorgeous; it is nicknamed the ‘Pink City.’ All the buildings are lovely pinks and peach colors and the architecture is fantastic. It is surrounded by huge, green mountains with towering old forts on top. There are two parts of Jaipur: the old city and the new city. The old city is surrounded by a big wall with only 8 entrances. Animals are all over the place: cows, monkeys, horses, camels, elephants, dogs, pigs, goats, cats, etc.

When we first got there, we checked into our fabulous hotel with a shower curtain and everything! Soon we were met by a tour guide who greatly resembled Robin Williams and went to the ‘City Palace’. The ‘king’ lives there (he doesn’t really do anything, he’s just the king) but half of it is a museum and very important astrological sight. I saw the biggest sun dial in the world there! Oh, and since it was tourist overkill, I saw a snake charmer!

Later that night we went to this cultural village thing that is kind of an equivalent to our Renaissance Festivals, but Indian. I saw a puppet show, traditional dance and music, a magic show, tight roping, and I got a henna tattoo. Henna is this paste like thing that stains your skin for a couple days. After about an hour of waiting in line for dinner, we entertained a large Indian family with our reactions to the spicy food haha. They were really nice though. This was considered our ‘welcome dinner’ from ISA.

More backtracking is coming!