Jaiper by far was our favourite city to date - we met a deaf guy near the Hawa Mahal - and he very kindly gave us a tour around the Hawa Mahal and the local market. It was good fun, and he helped us barter for goods in the market place. Having said that, it's best to bear in mind when travelling in India that you should be suspicious of EVERY SINGLE MAN there. According to our guide book if an Indian man buys you lots of things and goes out of his way to help you then it means he's only after one thing. Needless to say, we decided not to meet up with him in the evening to be on the safe side. It would have been lovely to meet lots of other deaf people, but better safe than sorry. Hawa Mahal means "Palace of the Winds", and is where all the wives of royalty used to live.
Next we headed to Jantar Mantar, an old fashioned observatory with all sorts of stone monuments which Lydia and I climbed all over. They have all these different instruments for measuring the sun, moon and stars. Very very cool, and lot's of great photo opportunities. Many of the monuments had steps cut into them so you could climb up them - but no guard rails, and the walls were only up to our ankles! They were really high up, so I was bricking myself, and ended up scooting all the way down them on my bum! If that was England they'd have all manner of health and safety issues, with metal guardrails and jump ropes probably!
Amber Fort was next on the agenda - we had to climb up a very steep hill to get there. Again, brilliant - wonderful views. We were followed around by a family with about 6 children who kept demanding that Lydia take their photo. The demands were relentless - and near the end the dad decided he wanted his photo taken with me, and tried to hold hands with me - so we legged it! Lydia and I have decided that the best thing to do is to tell everyone that we're married - seems to be working quite well so far!
We tried our hands at bartering in a jewellery shop - we seem to have quite a talent for it! I successfully managed to get a pair of moonstone earrings down from 5,000 rupees to 3,000 rupees. Lydia has a great tigers eye necklace which I think she got down from 800 rupees to 400 rupees. Not bad for a days work! Buying things in India takes so much longer - bartering can take up to an hour, sometimes more - and they keep trying to peddle more goods to you. Then if they really like you they invite you to have tea with them. We've had SO much Indian tea. It's really nice, but really really sweet.
Missed the first half of the England game - all the television networks in Pushkar went down! We were gutted - we managed to catch the second half. Ended up watching it with some really cool French guys. It was really nice to finally meet some other travellers - as we hadn't really met many people in the first few days. I think it's because we're staying at quite posh hotels for the first two weeks. Once we get back to Delhi we'll be roughing it once more! Gutted by the results - we were robbed. Now we've decided to support France in honor of our fellow travellers!
Alcohol is banned in Pushkar - so we couldn't drink whilst watching the game - was quite weird. But nice to watch the football sober for a change!
We went to the ghats to see the Brahmaj Mandir, a shrine to the gods. We had to pay a huge amount of money to get a red and orange thread dubbed the "Pushkar Passport" by locals. Basically, at the lake we throw flowers and dye in to bless family and friends. I couldn't understand a word the guy was saying, and we were supposed to repeat everything he said back to him. So I just spoke a lot of mumbo jumbo, and he kept nodding his head. So don't expect any good luck or blessings in the future! Basically, it means that you'll all go to heaven now!
Today we chilled at the hotel - a good thing really as I came down with Delhi Belly. Still feeling very rough, but hopefully I'll be better by tomorrow. Lydia is fine, lucky cow! Have been keeping her company at breakfast, lunch and dinner - but watching her eat just makes me feel even worse! We're driving to Udaipur tomorrow - it's about 5-6 hours by car - so I better be back to normal by then!
I'll sign off now - take care and hope you're all well!
Caroline xx
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment