We set out the next morning at a luxurious ten o'clock in the morning for Ranthambore National Park - luxurious because we'd been getting up at the crack of dawn for the past two days. Luxurious however was not the word to describe the road to Ranthambore; Bhandari wanted to try a new road he thought would save us some time, to go directly to Ranthambore, rather than going through Jaipur as we had previously thought would be the case. If the hairs on the back of your next just stood up, rest assured that ours did too, and didn't un-frazzle until we arrived more than five hours later.
Because, after leaving the comparatively safe single-lane highway, we turned onto the road to Ranthambore - a crumbling, single track of asphalt meant for truly local traffic. This didn't stop other jeeps, taxis and carrier trucks from using it either, and it was truly tense when our vehicle drove straight towards another - consequent games of chicken - and both vehicles tried to give the least amount of road to the either in order to pass.
Five bumpy hours later, we were in Ranthambore - that's not actually the name of the settlement that's sprung up to provide services to park-goers, but it's the easiest point of reference. Our hotel, the Tiger Safari, was clearly marked on the map, but as always, Mr. Bhandari paid it little mind, preferring to stop several times and ask locals which way he should go.
The hotel was actually pretty nice, fitting the mould of many hotels in India - relatively clean rooms, two single beds pressed together to form a double, a pair of blankets but no sheets, and a bathroom - this one in pretty good shape. Hot water on demand, as opposed to other hotels where you have to call and ask for it, or have it delivered to your room in a bucket. And, a western-style toilet complete with a roll of twenty-five pieces of toilet paper.
Oh yes - for those who don't know, toilet paper is a luxury in India, if not most parts of Asia; and when you think about it, it probably should be. To explain without becoming to graphic, let's just say that local customs dictate if you shake hands with someone or eat with your hands, you should do so with your right hand - the left is used for something else.
A check-in conversation with the manager of the hotel, Rahoul, was quite informative and interesting. He used to be the manager of a factory, but the factory closed down; a family friend suggested he could take over as the manager of the hotel in Ranthambore. He remarked that the management styles were different, but in the case of hotels, you can't employ the same standard of discipline when people get out of line, which mystified us until we figured out that he was actually talking about the guests, not the staff. And on the subject of guests, he was very open about his opinions of guests of different nationalities - I never did get to ask him what he thought of Canadians. "They ask to many questions," he probably would have said.
The hotel staff was made up completely of young men in the mid- to late-teens: Rahoul explained that they come from very poor villages, and are given the opportunity to make comparitively large sums of money that can support their families. "They daren't fail," remarked Rahoul ominously; "they are boys, and I have to keep them in line, but for the most part they do very well." The boys did snap to attention whenever Rahoul entered the room, but in our presence he was never abusive. I couldn't help but wonder however, the price of failure.
The boys themselves were talkative and curious, asking us the standard routine of questions - where we came from, our jobs, our age, and so forth - and in a shy, forbidden kind of way, whether Amy was my "girlfriend". I'm not sure if he was disappointed when I told him that no, we were in fact married. He went on to tell us all about his village, how he was taking the train there in a few days, how his cousin was going to get married. We found him charming enough that we gave him a tip directly, despite the "tip box" placed in plain view in the hotel lobby, which I imagine is intended to give the impression that the tips are shared among all. Whether this is true or not, we couldn't guarantee, so we decided to ignore it.
So the whole point of coming to Ranthambore is to visit the park in order to see one of the many tigers that live there. Park-goers have two options for transportation, as you can't walk or take your own wheels into the park: a lumbering, loud twenty-seat vehicle called a "canter", or a quieter four-seater jeep called a "gypsy". The gypsy is much more expensive than the canter, the price driven up by the comparative scarcity; boys from the hotels must run out at four o'clock in the morning to attempt to secure any seats that haven't been booked days in advance. We chose a canter.
We were awoken by a knock at the door at five o'clock in the morning (on schedule) in order that we could rise for a five-thirty breakfast and six o'clock departure. The best times to see tigers, apparently, are dawn and dusk; they find secluded places during the heat of the day to take a nap. Our canter arrived fifteen minutes late. There was some discussion between the driver (actually, the driver's assistant) and Rahoul about who among the assembled fifteen of us were to go, and in the end, only four of us went. In the darkness we found seats in the open-top vehicle, and with the sound of a tank engine, we rumbled off down the road to two more hotels to collect the remaining sixteen people. When we finally got the park, the sky was turning a royal blue and we were starting to wake up (thanks, in part, to the cool air blasting at us as we went).
While we were just waking up, souvenier salesmen had clearly been up for hours waiting for us and the other dozen canters and jeeps that had lined up waiting to get into the park. We were offered t-shirts, hats, canteens, disposable cameras, batteries, film, food, you name it - over and over again. I note with interest that the obvious foreigners refused the offers or ignored the hawkers completely - but the Indian and Nepalese family with us in our canter happily forked over rupees for some of the stuff. I'm guessing it's because the foreign tourists haven't got the rooms in their bags - or at least don't think they do. We certainly didn't.
The canter grumbled its way into launch position, behind two others, and then came to a halt for another twenty minutes. Apparently the park gives each vehicle a number and an entry time, in order to stagger the vehicles so they're not falling over each other. When we did go, our driver took no prisoners - speeding past brightly-plumed peacocks, monkeys, and deer - our quarry was a tiger, and we had already lost time. Eventually he and the assistant, who turned out to be experienced enough to act as a wilderness guide, did slow the pace to take some time looking at non-tiger animals. To cut to the chase, we didn't see a tiger - the closest we got was a paw-print - but we saw some magnificent creatures including a colourful kingfisher, a crocodile, and a pack of wild boar. We stopped in the middle of a pack of deers, so close you could reach out and touch them, but no tigers.
I can't say I'm surprised there weren't any tigers putting themselves on display - the canters make a hell of a noise, and eventually, they started to form up in packs of two or three as the drivers share information about where the tigers might be. Meanwhile, the quiet gypsy jeeps are followed by the noisy canters, making me very glad we didn't spend the extra money.
There's not much more to tell about Ranthambore - we had lunch and packed up to go to Jaipur. It wasn't until we were a couple of hours away, and on a much better road, that we realized we'd forgotten to hand in our room key. This prompted a discussion of what we should do - and we figured that it would probably be okay just to mail it. We certainly didn't feel like turning around and hitting the nasty road again.
We arrived at Jaipur in the afternoon. Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan, so it's essentially another big city filled with rickshaws, horrible traffic, and air pollution. We'd figured this would be the case so we'd only scheduled one night there, and were pleased enough with that. Jaipur's claim to fame is its colour - a light terracotta red - which has given it the nickname of "the pink city". Every building in the old quarter is painted this colour, which makes me think, if you don't like pink, you don't live in Jaipur's old quarter.
It was easy enough to let Bhandari organize our tourist schedule for us, and given that we didn't really have anything else planned, we just settled into his itinerary. As we'd arrived late in the day, we had a little time to find our hotel (we were lucky, our hotel was pretty easy to find and it only required about three roadside requests for directions) and then a trip downtown to see the Hawa Mahal, or as Mr. Bhandari called it, "five-hundred window house", an immense building that looks out onto a main street with hundreds of finely screened windows. Our guidebook tells us that it was built to allow the women of the court to view street processions without being seen (part of an ancient code called "purdah", which proscribes that royal women can't be seen, period). This visit was truly short - a few minutes, the car's engine idling, while we were meant to take pictures, and leave. We took pictures, and left.
We moved on, towards something else, that turned out to be closed: Bhandari then suggested the Rajasthan Government Handicraft office, which sold high-quality textiles and other Rajasthani items. Sure, why not: despite much looking around, Amy didn't find anything she liked, but I emerged with a blue long-sleeve shirt that will remind me of India, but will probably announce to any Indian that I'm a Westerner trying to fit in.
We then went to a second handicraft place - a bit seedier, but cheaper - where Bhandari announced that if we bought anything, no pressure, he would get a commission. To his credit, he's been very good about this, and since Amy was actually in the market to buy some pashminas, it worked out just fine. She emerged with two. It's interesting that despite repeated declarations that this was a no-haggle, no-pressure environment (not like other places, we were assured), we found that there was plenty of pressure to "just come in and look" and deals were to be had if we looked like we weren't interested in buying. In fact the whole layout of the place was designed to feed you from one sales room to another (shawls to bedspreads, to shoes, to brasswork, to paintings, to jewellery, etc.) until you finally sprawled out onto the street, your wallet empty.
We went back to the hotel, ate out at a nearby restaurant, and got up early the next day so we could begin the day's itinerary of sightseeing:
- Amber Fort
- Water Palace (stop for pictures)
- Jantar Mantar
- City Palace
...and then onto Pushkar in the early afternoon.
Apparently it's best to get to Amber fort early, as busloads of tourists arrive and clog up the place pretty quickly, especially if you want to take an elephant to climb the twenty-minute uphill walk. It's a big business, with dozens of brightly-painted elephants on hand to ferry tourists up the cobblestone switchbacks, designed to slow down enemy invaders while they're harrassed by defenders. In the modern version, invading tourists are harrassed by salesmen of different sorts: I couldn't help but laugh as a guy chased after our elephant with some of the ugliest puppets I've ever seen, to see if we would encourage our mahout to stop so we could buy one.
The other thriving business is photography, and a brilliant setup it is: six or seven guys with cameras stand on an embankment of the castle, taking pictures of elephant-bourne tourists, while one guy calls out to get the tourists' attention (so they'll look at the camera). Presto, instant memories: the photographers then rush their film to be developed, the tourists take an hour-long walk through Amber fort, and then on their way out, the photo salesmen just match pictures to faces and see what they can get for the photos. In typical fashion, it starts at five hundred rupees, but by the time we were walking away (they were pretty bad photos) he was down to fifty - in fact, he was down to "what will you give me for them?"
Here's the problem with this style of tourism: it doesn't agree with us because there's no time for memories of the places you've visited to settle into a permanent fixture. I don't really have any clear memories of Amber fort that I might not be confusing with the six other forts we visited, other than there were ramparts, large impressive buildings, and (probably) impressive carving and inlay work. We wandered around on our own, latching on to a few tours for snatches of explanation, but on the whole, were pretty happy not having a directed tour. When a security guard pointed out a set of steps that would should go on, we balked, thinking that maybe we would be going on a guided tour after all; he insisted, and before we knew it, we were heading through some of the less-visited areas of the fort. He did show us some interesting areas, including a balcony used by the emperor to view elephant fights, and decorated with frescos depicting said activities. At the end of our tour, he waited for a bit, I took his photograph and we said our goodbyes - when it was clear we weren't getting it, he suggested, "Now you may offer me some money." We gave him some rupees.
I do remember more clearly the hordes of people trying to sell me things, so much that I actually turned to one particularly persistant boy, took both of his shoulders in my hands and said to him in my slowest, most commanding English, "I'm not going to buy anything from you - not now, not ever," which seemed to be enough to set him on his way. We packed into the truck and plowed on towards the next item on our itinerary, a roadside stop of the Water Palace.
The palace earns its name from its location - it's a palace in the middle of a small lake. However, until there's actual water for the Water Palace to be in the middle of, it probably shouldn't be on anyone's itinerary. For right now, a better name might be the mud palace. But hey, Bhandari figures this is memorable, so we stopped to get some pictures.
The car hadn't even slowed down when we were approached by a little girl dressed up in a vibrant purple sari, asking me to take her picture. I've seen this before: you take the picture, they tell you that will cost a hundred rupees, and it's hard to bargain down because you've already taken the picture. Hard feelings for everyone. No, I explained, I'm just here to take a picture of the palace, and trudged over to the side of the boulevard to get an unobstructed view of mud palace.
All the while, she was following me, asking me to take her picture. I wasn't going to get out of this one too easily. She kept on striking poses, smiling - take my picture, take my picture. So I figured, can I at least be a different tourist, someone that isn't just a walking wallet? I asked her name: she told me, Puja. The Hindi word for worship. I told her mine, what country I was from. All of this was digested. Then, would I take her picture. No, but how about she take my picture? Thinking a little reversal might change gears here. I showed her how the camera worked: I aimed it and put her finger in the right position: she took a picture of me. I showed her how my face would show up on the screen. I'm not sure whether she was impressed or not: if so, it didn't last, as she asked me to take her picture.
I was through with the Water Palace, and I have to admit, I was through with this transaction that wasn't going to happen. It didn't help that by this point her little brother, brightly dressed up, had come over with a violin-like musical instrument and had started to play. At first ostensibly for some money, but then it appeared to be an audition for whether or not I'd like to buy his instrument.
It must have been clear that these carefully orchestrated attempts for me to shell over some cash weren't going to work, so as I started to walk back to the car, they switched gears of their own, resorted to unhappy pleas for money. At the car, it was for anything: bananas, chocolate. Something. Hands tapping on the windows as we drove off, eyes larger than saucers piercing at us, awaiting something that would never come. There was silence in the car all the way to our next monument.
Several things went through my mind as we drove. I wondered what Mr. Bhandari was thinking: was he ashamed of these kids, that they resorted to begging for money? Was he ashamed of me for not sharing even the tiniest bit of my relatively massive wealth? Or did he just accept that this was the way things were, and some people were kind, and others were not?
I wondered why I held so closely my reluctance to give. Was it because I wasn't sure any of this money would benefit Puja and her brother at all, or rather, might it go straight to the pocket of her father? Or maybe I just didn't like the idea of being manipulated, attacked on an emotional level - the one that is described by the fact that you have so much, why not share the tiniest fraction with me, because you can, and you won't even notice? Part of me thinks that it is a conservative reflex that I developed in Toronto - there is a fair amount of homelessness there, and I think along the same lines when it comes to individual giving. What will this guy use the money for, I'll just have to give again tomorrow, that sort of thing.
But whatever dark place I'd sunk into during our drive to the next monument to be seen, it was still relatively high compared to Puja's problems - I'm the one with the high-class problem. It was only later that I decided that if I was in that situation again, I wouldn't hesitate to take the picture, buy the trinket, do something small. For the paltry some that passes hands, it keeps both sides feeling happy, and there's some dignity to it. There's no resorting to begging.
I worked through my funk at our next destination, the Jantar Mantar - the astronomical garden. Designed and erected in the eighteen century, the array of scultpure-like constructions were used to calculate the position of various celestial bodies, the time, and even to predict the intensity of monsoons. Our guidebook mentions that the time calculated by the giant sundial is unique to Jaipur (between ten and forty-one minutes behind Indian standard time, but it's used to calculate the Hindu calendar.
We decided to take charge of our own schedule and decided not to visit the City palace. Given that the two monuments were right next to each other, it was a simple matter of just hanging out for longer at the Jantar Mantar and showing up at the parking lot when we were done.
Our drive to Pushkar was uneventful, and on a nice road. Pushkar is a very small town with a very important lake in its centre: it attracts pilgrims of all stripes to bathe in its waters, and apparently, one day of the year, a bath will wash away all of your sins. It's surrounded by no less than five hundred temples, and the only temple in India devoted to Brahma, surprising as Brahma is one of the more important figures in Hindu mythology.
We only spent a single night in Pushkar: for its size, it has been converted by the influence of tourism. There are many, many western tourists looking for enlightenment or just a quiet time away from it all, and as such, there are now as many internet cafes as there are Hindu temples. Our hotel was nice, the food was nice, the surroundings were nice. We definitely didn't do much sightseeing.
Our wandering through Pushkar was greeted by a much-reduced version of Delhi's aggressive salesmen: you want to look in my shop? No? Okay, no problem. They may have figured out that sometimes you get better results by letting a customer come to you, rather than trying to trick them or badger them into buying something. One area that has not escaped the hard sell in Pushkar is, surprisingly enough, religion.
The story of the Pushkar passport
We didn't get thirty feet into Pushkar's bazaar when we were approached by a guy in his early twenties, who greeted us heartily and thrust some flower petals into our respective right hands. This unanticipated move had a bunch of interesting side effects: now I can't shake anyone's hand, or use my right hand for anything, really - as I have this guy's sacred offering in it. I can't even switch it to my left hand, as that would probably be pretty disrespectful. Although in retrospect I should have done it just to see the look in his face.
For, you see, Amy and I were to be inaugurated with the so-called "Pushkar passport," a scheme designed to part tourists from some money in return for what so many would like: the ability to be left alone. As our guidebook described, in return for a donation, you receive a blessing and a bracelet of colourful string, designed to act as a beacon to other donation-seekers that you've already given something.
Here's what actually happened.
We, having informed ourselves to the passport scheme, already figured that we would participate at some point, and figured out an amount that we would donate in return for our passports. Our guide, whose name I have now forgotten, happily took us through the main street of Pushkar towards the lake which is encircled by the temples and ghats (stone steps) that make up the core of Pushkar. As we walked, he enthusiastically described how a brahmin priest would perform the ritual that would give us a powerful blessing, and how our donation would go towards supporting the five hundred temples and countless sadhus (wandering holy men) that pass through. As if to underscore the point and make sure that we knew what was happening, he mentioned on at least two occasions that we would receive a band that we could wear, called "the Pushkar passport" that our guidebook might have mentioned.
When we (finally) reached the ghat, our guide skipped ahead of us to give word of his two suckers charges to the Brahmin priests who would be administering our sacred blessings. They were reclining on wooden benches outside of a store, dressed in Indian summer business casual - slacks, button-up top and a vest. They approached us, greeted us heartily, bade us take off our shoes and took us down to the ghat. They split us up, on the odd logic that even though we were married, we didn't have children. In the hands of each, a metal plate with red and yellow powders, rice, and a coconut.
My brahmin priest, Sethi, went on to explain everything that our guide had, in painstaking detail. We then went down to the side of the ghat, my flower petals having grown quite stale in my hand, and he began the ritual. He asked me to repeat after him, one word at a time, a chant in Hindi. Getting into character, I intoned each word with a dutiful solemnity. I can't remember the actual chant, but after we recited it, he explained that the chant was a prayer to the gods to bring happiness, prosperity and good health to myself and all the members of my family. At the end, I cast the flacid flower petals into the water.
So while we had been set up with the "divide and conquer" strategy, he now proceeded with the hard sell. For he explained how a donation would go to the maintenance and upkeep of five hundred temples, as well as the day-to-day needs of the wandering sadhus that call Pushkar their home at one point or another. He didn't proceed to closing the deal just yet, he had a bit more ritual to perform.
We went through the chant again, word after word, and as we did so, he dumped some of the red powder into my hands, and bade me to cast it into the water as well. Again he explained that it was a blessing on me and all the members of my family. He then added something new to the chant: I would, at the proper time, announce the amount of money that I would be donating. I knew that Amy wouldn't budge from our agreed-upon amount: I figured that the performance was worth enough to warrant some extra rupees.
Sethi: And now a blessing to be given to your family: to you father...
Andrew: Peter.
Sethi: To you mother...
Andrew: Virginia.
Sethi: To you brother...
Andrew: Rob.
Sethi: To you sister...
Andrew: (no sister, sorry)
Sethi: For this blessing, for the good deeds you support with you donation of...
Andrew: One hundred rupees.
Sethi didn't take this one gracefully. He went on to explain in great detail how some people come and donate five hundred, one thousand, even a million rupees, for the blessing that they receive from Pushkar. That there are five hundred temples around here that only continue from donations. My problem was my scam radar was on full alert: this felt much more like a Delhi salesmen trying to convince me that I should go to a tourist office than a holy blessing. He must have sensed some doubt in me, as we went through the chant again. This time, he rubbed some red powder mixed with water into a dot on my forehead, and then stuck some grains of rice on it. He stuck the coconut in my hands and bade me wave it around the pool as I incanted the words.
Sethi: And now a blessing to be given to your family: to you father...
Andrew: Peter.
Sethi: To you mother...
Andrew: Virginia.
Sethi: To you brother...
Andrew: Rob.
Sethi: For this blessing, for the good deeds you support with you donation of...
Andrew: One hundred rupees.
Sethi: One hundred each for father, mother, brother, three hundred rupees.
Andrew: No, one hundred rupees.
Sethi then went on to explain how it was necessary for me to make donations for each of the members of my family, as they might not have the opportunity to visit Pushkar. He started in on the chant again. I stopped him, eventually having to put my hands on his shoulders and turn him to me, and said, "Sethi, I'm donating a hundred rupees, okay?" To which he smiled, and said, "okay," and finished the ritual by tying a red and yellow string around my wrist.
We moved back up to the steps and he set me in the care of a pair of boys, a teen and a kid, while we waited for Amy's priest to finish the mojo on her. She came back, and it was time to pony up: they presented a plate with the coconut on it, which we figured meant that none of the money we were donating was ever going to see a temple, much less a sadhu. Amy suggested that the money could go into the donations box, which they suggested was absolutely not necessary: quite vigorously, actually.
So that's the Pushkar passport story.
We left the money, walked around the ghats for a while until the sunset, and then left for some food. A pretty good meal: only two power cuts, and really friendly service that didn't blink an eye when they had to pull out the generator to bring back the lights and music.
We left for Jodhpur at a reasonable hour the next day: four hours passed quicker than usual, given a well-maintained road, and we actually arrived earlier than we'd suggested to our next hotel. Taken advantage of the remaining daylight hours we elected to do some sightseeing before going to the hotel, in this case a homestay. The fort in Jodhpur has a very long name that begins with an "M", and is actually above and beyond the "usual" of fortresses in Rajasthan: meticulously preserved, and the first in India to give the visitor a complimentary audio tour, so you can visit the fort at your own pace. The fort boasts a great collection of armnaments from the period, as well as a vast array of other relics. But by far for me, the most awe-inspiring attraction of the fort is its view over Jodhpur city, where each of the houses is a two- or three-story cubic home painted in either white or blue, showing a veritable sea of typical Indian housing.
It was while we were admiring the view, and I was taking pictures, that we drew some attention from other tourists: this time, the domestic kind. In the first case it was two men, that we chatted very briefly with in broken English, and finished it off with a few pictures. It was the picture-taking that drew the attention of a group of kids, ranging in ages between probably five and fourteen: at first they were shy, but after a family portrait, I showed them the result on the screen and they went absolutely wild. Then it was a mob to become the next one to get their picture taken and see the results on the screen... this was a real day's entertainment. But the rawness of their emotions, the honesty behind the smiles, it more than made up for previous experiences where I have been wary to bring out the camera. They didn't speak any English, I didn't speak enough Hindi, but it seemed that none of that hardly mattered and their father had to peel them away or else we might have been there all night.
This time finding our hotel was more difficult than usual, owing to the fact that it was situated in the Jodhpur suburbs, and the owners don't like putting signs out. There were many fruitless roadside hails for directions, until I remembered that Bhavna, the wife of the couple that owned the homestay, had given us some directions to help us find them.
The homestay was among the pricier of the places that we stayed in Rajasthan, but certainly among the best. Meticulously maintained, with only eight rooms and a delightful central courtyard, it had a relaxed, laid-back feel that was very welcoming. After dropping our stuff and "refreshing" ourselves we sat with Bhavna and her mother for a good half an hour in the living room and chatted. As well as running the homestay, Bhavna organizes all the meals for guests who choose to dine with her, and offers to teach what she knows of Indian cooking: Amy was immediately interested when we read that in the guidebook.
Also staying at the homestay were a pair of Austrians, a quartet of Germans, and two Britains who arrived after us, unhappy with the choice of hotel given to them by their tour operator. We were quite the international bunch, dining on fantastic Indian fare in the courtyard on a warm winter evening.
We did some more sightseeing, we bought some spices from Jodhpur's famed spice market, and we had a generally lovely time hanging out at the homestay and enjoying Amy's cooking. This dispatch has run rather long so I'm just going to finish here with a brief telling of my day of running around with Mr. Bhandari while Amy took her first cooking lesson.
Bhandari and I had two items to take care of: the first one was sending back the room key to the Tiger Safari by mail and second, getting ourselves a train ticket from Delhi to Rishikesh, our next destination in India.
Seeing how people send mail (or indeed, do anything that involves lining up in a queue) in India really is a treat compared to how it's done in any western country. People line up shoulder to shoulder, completely invading each other's space, and it's a microcosm of driving: if there's an opening to the front of the queue, and you haven't protected your turf, it's open season for someone to butt in front of you. But Bhandari is an absolute champion: we walked in there with the room key, tightly packed in a folded-over and taped-up envelope, and he went straight to the front of the "information" lineup and poked his head right into the office, butting in front of everyone. My guess is he wanted to just make sure it was acceptable for post: the short story for their long conversation was, it wasn't.
Our next task involved repacking. We went outside to a shop where they will pack stuff for you, and Bhandari, not finding anyone around, presented the problem to the guy at the cigarette shop next door. When I say shop, these are really kiosks, or better yet, a box on cinder blocks made out of sheet metal and/or plywood, probably about six feet tall by three feet wide and three feet deep. Bhandari figured that you could take a cigarette box, dump out the contents, wrap the envelope around it, and that would make it look more like a package. As we did this, completely discarding the cigarettes without paying for them, a few more people arrived to see what we were doing and add their advice. There must have been four people involved in this problem by the time we were done, and marching back to the post office.
Again, straight to the front of the line with our newly-wrapped package. The guy at the queue looked at it and shook his head: it didn't pass muster. Bhandari didn't blow his top like I expected him to, but we did change gears and go to the train station to deal with that task instead. Same thing, but change mail for trains: queues and forms. I had filled out a form in Delhi, expecting that I could hand it in here in Jodhpur. No dice, they use a different form here, and I had to fill that one out. Of course, I didn't bring a pen with me, and we had to ask around to borrow one from someone else standing in line. As I filled out the form, about five guys who probably had nothing better to do decided to come over and watch what I was doing: normally, this would really bug me, but the absurdity of the last hour had completely warmed me up to it. I involved them as much as I could in writing every detail of the form.
As much as I could, that is, for I had no real sense of the train number I needed or wanted, the class, or even the time that was available. Bhandari did, thankfully, and after spending much fewer rupees than I had expected, we exited with a ticket good for an overnight train from Delhi to Haridwar. As a note of foreboding, I should note that I had intended to pay more, but I expect that Mr. Bhandari thought he was doing me a favour by saving me some rupees by taking a lower class of train. Either that or he thought the trip we were doing through Rajasthan was too cushy.
So, time to finish off the mail. By this time the packaging guy had returned to his cubby hole, so we stopped in to see how much he would charge to wrap the thing up in a post office-approved format. Eighty rupees: about two dollars and change. Bhandari was convinced this was highway robbery, especially given the miniscule size of our package, but I convinced him that our time was worth money, too, and that by the time we found a guy who would do it for sixty rupees we'd have spent the whole day running around. I shelled out the eighty rupees. So in the end, the key was: wrapped in a thick plastic sheet, pushed into a cigarette package, covered in an envelope, taped up with lots of green tape, enveloped in two pieces of A4-sized cardboard, tied up with string, and then placed in a large manilla envelope. I had to write the address of the Tiger Safari again on the manilla envelope, and luckily, I had the card for the Tiger Safari, else we would have had to take the whole thing apart again.
It was with great trepidation that we returned to the post office: if the guy didn't take it this time, I envisioned Bhandari pulling him through the bars that separated the queue from the post office agents. But indeed it got the nod of approval, and we went to another line to wait. And wait we did: a beefy Italian guy was shipping two great packages of ... something, and we all watched as he counted out the hundred-rupee notes to get it back to Italy. Packaging for shipment is clearly an art in India: there are no standard containers, so what ends up happening for larger items is that they are wrapped and padded, and then sewn into their final packet form in canvas, and sealed up with wax.
When I got to the front of the queue, the postage was less than the cost of packaging. Didn't matter: the key was on its way, and I said we should have some chai (tea) to celebrate. We drove around for a while before we found a truly local tea house - a cubby-hole with a single burner and some pots - but it served the purpose. I chatted with a civil servant on his break from the office across the road, the "Narcotics Control Bureau, Jodhpur zone". We chatted about basic things, and he answered different questions than I asked, leading me to believe his grasp on English wasn't as good as he or I thought it was. When Bhandari and I had finished our tea, I looked around for where I should put my wafer-thin plastic cup: Bhandari and the other assembled tea-drinkers laughed politely at my dilemma, and solving it, Bhandari took my cup, crushed it with his and tossed it on the ground to end up with one of hundreds of others. "Don't worry about it," said my civil servant companion, "this is my India."
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