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January 9th 2008 by Tina
The Pink City

Posted under India

We flew from Mumbai to Jaipur, which is the capital of the Indian state of Rajasthan, and took a taxi to the Hotel Pearl Palace, near the city-center. Our room was not quite ready so we ventured up to the rooftop for a drink. Our room was tastefully decorated with local textiles and modern amenities. After settling in, we set out for a walk to the train station to purchase train tickets to our next few destinations. We only made it a half-block from the hotel before an autorickshaw-wallah convinced us to let him drive us around. Rickshaws are two or four-seater cabs or carts with a single driver’s seat in front. Autorickshaws have motors and can maneuver through traffic like a motorcycle. Bicycle rickshaws are slightly cheaper and good for short distances. We arrived at the train station and booked tickets to Ajmer, Udaipur and Jaisalmer. Our driver, Munna, was so friendly that we took him up on his offer to take us sightseeing around town for the rest of the day.

Jaipur is much smaller than Mumbai but it is still a bustling city. As Munna skillfully maneuvered through the noisy throngs of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, animal carts and rickshaws, we felt almost hypnotized by the whir and hum of the city streets. We began in the Old City, also called the Pink City, which is surrounded by salmon-pink walls. At City Palace, home to the current Maharaja, we wandered through the complex of courtyards, gardens and buildings. We toured the textile room, which houses garments worn by centuries of Maharajas and their royal families, including one ruler who was over seven feet tall and five hundred pounds! He had 108 wives and concubines but no children. Next, we saw the armory with walls and glass cases covered in historic Indian weaponry – bejeweled swords, antique rifles and handguns, battle armor and helmets, knives of every length, curvature and design, a mace, and intricately decorated gunpowder bags. In the courtyard, we caught the end of a puppet show and also saw a snake charmer! His beguiled cobra swayed to the enchanting sound of his flute. The snake’s poison had been removed but it still flared as if about to attack.

Munna recommended a good place for thali and we made a quick lunch stop before moving on. We were the only tourists inside the dim restaurant, which is a good sign. The thali was great, though much less elaborate than Chetana, and it energized us for our next stop: the Royal Gaitor. The royal cenotaphs, or tombs of the Maharajas of Jaipur, were set against dry, rocky mountains. They are beautifully carved monuments with intricate details, carved out of marble from Italy, India and many parts of Asia.

As is customary in tourist haunts like Jaipur, Munna drove us around to several local shops where the rickshaw drivers receive hefty commissions on anything you purchase. The proprietors are most accommodating, usually offering tea and a demonstration of how their products are made in an attempt to butter you up for the high pressure sell. We began at a shop that sold beautiful Indian textiles. After a brief demonstration of how block printing is done, we were led into a kaleidoscope of brilliantly colored floor-to-ceiling fabrics. The salesman sat us down and began his presentation of beautiful bed coverings, pulling one after another out of its plastic packaging and flinging it into the air so that it magically unfolded and fell gently to the floor in a swish of multicolor. Each subsequent layer was higher quality, more ornate and more expensive than the last. He was very aggressive in his approach, constantly asking my opinion on the various fabrics, talking over my thoughts, intently listening and intrusively weighing in on my discussions with Aaron. It was quite overwhelming and decidedly annoying. The shop had beautiful things but lost out on our business because of the pushy style of its salesman. We looked next at hand-woven Indian rugs and handicrafts but this simply wasn’t our kind of shopping. We prefer to wander through street bazaars full of haggling vendors. Our sleep schedules were still a bit off from the 11 ½ hour time change; we were waking around 4am and passing out by eight so we retired early to the hotel and scheduled another day with Munna as our guide.

The next morning, we started with Ishwar Minar Swarga Sal, the Heaven Piercing Minaret. Standing 150 feet tall in the middle of the Old City, the tower offered spectacular panoramic views of the entire city. Jaipur’s buildings were boxy and dilapidated, generally two to four stories tall and painted in soft pastels. We stayed at the top just long enough to take in the views and then descended the dark spiral ramp and climbed back into the rickshaw. We rode by Hawa Mahal, Palace of the Winds, on our way out of the Pink City. It was built in 1799 by the Maharaja so that his women could look out over the city from (as described in our guide book) the “extraordinary, fairy-tale, pink-sandstone delicately honeycombed hive” and remain inconspicuous. It is by far the most aesthetically impressive building in Jaipur.

Next stop: Amber Fort. Set on a mountain top about 11km north of Jaipur, the pale pink looks vast enough to encapsulate a small city. We declined offers of jeep and painted elephant transport to traverse the road leading to the fort entrance on foot. The courtyard of the fort was full of activity and, while Aaron waited in line to buy tickets, I was accosted by every variety of trinket-seller. Luckily, my pest-evasion skills are sharp these days and I was able to escape them with minimal effort. As we wandered through the fort’s many buildings, courtyards and labyrinthine hallways (the Maharaja’s passageways to his various wives and concubines), we admired the traditional Rajasthani architecture: elaborate entryways, beautiful city views from corner towers, and the intricate designs in the Hall of Victory and Hall of Pleasure. We could easily envision the Maharaja attending to his amorous desires between royal responsibilities.

The final stop on our sightseeing itinerary was the Temple of the Sun God, also known as the Monkey Palace because of the throngs of monkeys that tumble around the entrance like wire-haired gymnasts, swinging on power lines and wrestling, chasing, and resting on the stone walls leading up to the palace. The temple itself, though beautiful, was unimpressive – the monkeys, cows, pigs, goats and the snake charmer that we passed by on the way up were much more thrilling.

After the Monkey Palace, we asked Munna to drop us off at one of the many bazaars just outside of the Old City. We paid him and wandered around the bazaar for a short while before heading toward our hotel on foot. At a major traffic circle, we spied a McDonalds and decided that ice cream was in order. We were surprised to find McDonalds in India, particularly because Hindis regard cows as sacred animals, symbolic of fertility and nurture, and allow them to roam freely through the city streets. You typically don’t find beef on any menu in India. McDonalds has tackled that dietary hurdle by offering paneer salsa wraps, veggie burgers and curried chicken among other beef-free favorites. Thankfully, McDonald’s ice cream and French fries are pretty much universal.

I had read in our guide book about an award-winning, local artist, well-known for his blue pottery. We found Kripal Singh’s gallery on our map and decided to hire a bicycle rickshaw to take us there. As we walked out of McDonalds, there were four bicycle rickshaws parked outside. I picked the oldest of the four pedalers, thinking that he probably didn’t get as many fares as his more spry competitors, and we agreed on a fare of 40 rupees (about $1). Little did we know that almost the entire distance would be at a slight but constant incline. Only a few minutes into our journey, the pedaler turned to us and clarified that he wanted 40 rupees per person to which we happily agreed, feeling guilty for his obvious struggle, as other rickshaws passed us by. We finally had him drop us off at the end of the residential road on which the gallery was located. An attendant greeted us at the entry and showed us into a small room, where three of the four walls were covered from floor to ceiling with Kripal Singh’s famous blue pottery. After an extensive period of indecision, we selected a pretty floral vase which will undoubtedly cost more to ship home than the original purchase price. Nevertheless, we were excited about our new treasure as we set out down the road.

Before long, we were approached by a group of menacing young boys who persistently demanded rupees. Accustomed to dealing with this kind of despicable behavior, we employed our usual tactics for deflecting the boys. When those attempts failed to shake them, I tried a new one that I had been eager to test. I stopped short, pivoted, and began barking like a dog. They jumped back in surprise at my loud, shrill bark and most vicious dog face but still they continued to follow us. I barked again and I honestly think it might have worked if we had been able to refrain from laughing hysterically. Suddenly, a boy on a bicycle rode straight at me from the right side. Just before he reached me, he pulled up the front tire and hopped off the back of the bike, still holding the handle bars and walking the spinning front tire toward my face. I turned and the tire grazed my arm. It didn’t hurt but it was enough to set Aaron off. He ran at them, angrily screaming, and finally frightening them off. If he hadn’t been holding our fragile new purchase, I think he would have taken at least one of them down.

The reality is that no good result can come of an encounter with these little street urchins, especially when they work in groups. If you give them money, you are rewarding and perpetuating beggar behavior. If you give to one, he tries to get more and you get swarmed by all of his sticky-fingered cohorts. They are experienced enough to be undeterred by threats or shouting. While our instincts scream that a WWE-style body slam is the best recourse, we have so far opted for patience. If we ignore them long enough, they eventually get bored and go away. Still, it’s interesting how our minds work around our normal perceptions of children as innocents to paint these beggar children as vermin. They don’t have the innocent faces of youth; they have faces aged and hardened by the harsh realities of their surroundings. When they’re swarming you as you walk down the street, tugging at your clothes, purposely bumping into you or stepping in front of you, you stop seeing them as children from vulgar beginnings and start seeing them as well-trained, methodical pests that must be expelled from your personal space by whatever means necessary.

Safely back at Pearl Palace, we recounted our Jaipur experiences over dinner on the rooftop. We had enjoyed two action-packed days, which merely allowed us to scratch the surface of a city with so much vitality and colorful culture. Despite the many sights that we toured around Jaipur, the vision that will stay in my memory is one of whizzing through the city streets in the cab of an autorickshaw with the flash and hum of life outside appearing as little more than a time-warped blur.

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