On to Jaipur: we would spend two nights here in the “Pink City” (which was more of a salmon colour to me, but whatevs).
We got to see the “wind palace” which is this weird looking building ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawa_MahalAlso visited the city palace, Amber Fort, and the Jantar Mantar observatory which is a highlight:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jantar_Mantar,_JaipurI was getting cranky with the tour group by this time so I skipped a dinner with a local family. My wife is a little less introverted than me so she went along with the tour group.
They went to the local family’s house where they prepared a wonderful meal. The food was good (no surprise) and the family very interesting. It was a nice experience to interac with the locals and see how they live and blah blah blah I was so tired of eating 3 meals a day with these people even though I really am fond of them....I had a lovely curry meal, alone, in the hotel restaurant while trying to pick out bits of conversation from a French couple who were speaking french at a table across from me.
With my “me” time satiated I was willing to spend free time shopping with the group on the next day.
I wanted to replace my wedding band in India. My current one was purchased at the Comox First Nation back in my university days (so it is on the cheap side).
I also was feeling miffled towards the FN artist community for their usual bullshit complaining about appropriation of “their” art.
So, in a fit of (racist?) rage I swore to my wife that I would replace my wedding band with, ha, isn’t this so ironically funny?, a plain gold band purchased in INDIA.
Meh, by the time I got to a decent jewellery store months after my “post CBC radio rage moment” I no longer cared (although I am unlikely to purchase FN art going forward but this is a topic for another thread).
Anywho, almost bought the wife some nice earrings but at $1,200 US, and being large hoops, even the wife wasn’t interested.
Much of the jewellery was nice but very bling-y and too close to being like costume jewellery. We prefer minimalistic pieces so we passed and I promised to make it up to her next time we are in Greece (which is a clever way to convince her to go back to Greece, no?).
Jojawar: after a long bus ride we arrived to this small town. The hotel was more like a luxury boutique Hacienda.
We arrived in the afternoon and soon headed out for a train ride.
First, getting to the train was an experience. We climbed aboard an old (1940’s?) Chevrolet pickup truck.
Drove through town and then down some winding roads (past a cow carcass being enjoyed by some feral dogs) to arrive at the train station. Very rural: this was not the train station from Mysore or Chennai we had experienced earlier in our trip.
It was like a scene from the old west but with “east Indians.” We got on the train for a bit of a joy ride. The doors are left open so you get to hang out of the train as it moves slowly to the next towns/villages. A very relaxing ride involving numerous stops, monkeys climbing onto the train to get some food from the locals (the train is more for tourists but the locals still use it to get around), and beautiful vistas.
After a while we get off, climbed aboard the Chevrolet that has followed us, and headed back to the hotel to watch the sun set from the roof and then have drinks and dinner before heading off to our last stop the next morning.
Udaipur: before coming here we walked the small town of Jojawar in the morning. Came across a woman with bracelets up and down her arms and with her head loaded with kitchen utensils and pots and pans she was trying to sell. I was already overweight for the flight back to Dehli so I passed buying any of the heavy frying pans and pots.
Then it was a bus ride to Udaipur. It was very interesting as we got closer as the roadside marble shops dotted the roadside.
This place felt wealthy and probably is nearly as wealthy as Kerala in the south.
But instead of the sweet/pungent smell of spices, here it was the sweet white dust of marble.
Dump trucks were full of marble carrying marble stone, rock, chips, dust, every which way.
Udaipur is a lakeside town and it reminded me of Kelowna in BC’s Okanagan.
Relaxed, laid back, lakeside comfort. It was warm during the day and not too bad at night.
We did the usual: lakeside boat cruise, city palace, Jagdish Temple tour.
Did some shopping and sat in restaurants near the lake enjoying drinks and Indian food.
After a couple of nights our long journey was about to come to an end as we flew back to Dehli before, eventually saying good bye to our new friends and taking the long flight home to Vancouver.
But man, showering at the hotel in Richmond was so nice. Clean water that you could brush your teeth with and clean your body with without feeling grimy!