The Pink City

Jaipur, India: Our last stop in Rajasthan was Jaipur. Jaipur is supposed to be one of the top cities in Rajasthan to visit. Our first day, we went out to lunch and then planned to do the walking tour as set out by Lonely Planet. About 15 minutes into the walking tour, I told Jigar I wasn’t feeling well. We went back to the hotel and I was sick for the rest of the day. When you are in India, “loose motions”, as they say around here, are a fairly close companion.

Feeling better the next day, we went to check out the city palace. If you thought, as we did, that this was the royal residence, you’d be wrong. It is an old part of the palace that they don’t use anymore. The “royal residence” is, apparently, the cool part, but it costs $40 (that’s dollars, not rupees) to visit. Needless to say, thus far Jaipur was a bit disappointing. As we left the city palace, we stopped at a chaiwalla to get some tea. While there, we met a rickshaw driver who offered to take us to some sights around the city. We are wary of these guys, but decided to give him a try. He took us to the lake palace, which was beautiful.

And then he took us to the obligatory shop (where all rickshaw drivers take you because if you buy something they get a hefty commission). The shop was interesting because they showed us how they do the Rajasthani block printing. But the sales pressure was high and we barely got out of there with our wallets in tact. We decided to steer clear of rickshaw drivers after that! We just had one last stop to make before we parted ways with our driver. We asked him to take us to a restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet. It was on a rooftop on the fort itself overlooking the city. We thought it’d be cool to check out. We settled in and placed our order. As we waited for our food, Jigar noticed that there was a menu on the wall in Hindi. That menu had different prices on it than the menu we had ordered from, which was in English. He asked the waiter about it. The waiter told him the reason our food was more expensive was that it was “special food”. Jigar told him that we didn’t need any special food, regular food was just fine for us. In the end, we got portions that were half of the size of everyone else in the restaurant – Indian or foreigner. The portions were so small, they had to serve it in different dishes than they used for everyone else. Anway, our visit to Jaipur was not starting out well.

The next day, we finished the walking tour (which involved a large amount of harassment from shopkeepers and rickshawwallas) and decided to take in a movie. The movie theater in Jaipur, called the Raj Mandir, is self proclaimed to be the biggest movie theater in Asia. It has over 1100 seats. While waiting in line, we met two American girls. Christine is working in Delhi for a year for a company that is equipping villages with solar panels so that they have power. Emily was just there for a visit. She was on her way home from working for a hospital in Tanzania for a year. When it turned out that the movie was sold out, we all decided to go hang out together. There weren’t too many options nearby, so we settled for McDonald’s. Jigar and I had been secretly dying to try the McDonald’s masala fries so we didn’t mind. We had our fries and milkshakes and got to know Christine and Emily a bit. Before too long, the manager came over and asked us to sign the guestbook! Who knew McDonald’s had a guestbook?

We hadn’t given up on the sightseeing yet, so our next stop was Amber Fort. Finally, something beautiful to make our time in Jaipur worthwhile! Amber Fort is on the outskirts of the city. It is a majestic old fort on a hill and you can feel the regal history steeped into the stones. There is another fort even further up the hill called Jaigadh Fort. We spent so long at Amber Fort that they told us not to bother going up the hill. It’s a 20 minute walk up and it’d be closed by the time we got there. The main attraction of the second fort is that it has the largest cannon on wheels in the world. Jigar really wanted to show it to me so we decided to take our chances. We made our trek up the hill and we were rewarded. The guards were kind enough to let us in. We went straight to the cannon (more or less) and watched the sunset from the top of the hill.

After our return to the city from the forts, we decided to give Raj Mandir one more try. This time we got tickets to the movie! We saw Rab ni de Bani Jodi starring Shuh Rakh Khan (also known as SRK). It was a typical, but very cute, hindi movie.

Our last day in Jaipur, we went to Jantar Mantar. Jantar Mantar is a weird place where one of the maharajas built all these crazy astronomical instruments. We had seen so many forts lately and heard so many audio guides that we decided to check out this place on our own. Big mistake! These giant gadgets meant nothing to us. Oh well! We had one more place we wanted to see – the Hawa Mahal. It was a palace built for the queens and other female royalty. Since they observed perda in India (which means women may never be seen), they had to build a place that the women could observe celebrations and festivals without being seen. Hawa Mahal was the answer. It was being renovated so the inside was not particularly beautiful, but we did get a nice view of the city.

Overall, we didn’t particularly enjoy our visit to Jaipur. We stayed to see all the sites so that we never have to go back there again. It was far too touristy and the vendors there are extremely pushy. India has some beautiful places, but the super touristy sites tend not to bring the worst of people. We were ready to visit Jigar’s childhood friend Himanshu in Delhi.

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Bikaner and the Temple of the Rats

We arrived in Bikaner at about 5am after a difficult night on an overnight bus. Luckily, we had a hotel reservation and went directly to the hotel. We slept for several hours until we were awoken by our phone ringing. It was my family calling to say merry Christmas! When they had called the day before (while we were racing our camels across the Great Thar Desert of Rajasthan), the call hadn't connected so I didn't get a chance to speak with them. It was a wonderful way to be woken up on Christmas morning. Everyone was there so we took turns talking to all my sisters, my nephews, and my parents.

When we finally got up, we set out to explore the town. We did a bit of walking tour and saw all the havelis (heritage homes) and temples in Bikaner. There is a beautiful Jain temple which is covered in colorful paintings inside (that's really unusual for a Jain temple). During our walk, we noticed that most of the shops were closed for Christmas, which I thought was interesting since most Indians are not Christian.

In the afternoon, we took a bus to Deshnok to the Karni Mata Temple. Otherwise known as the Rat Temple. The story goes that Karni Mata (a 14th century incarnation of the goddess Durga) asked the god of death, Yama, to restore to life the son of a grieving storyteller. When Yama refused, Karni Mata reincarnated all dead storytellers as rats, depriving Yama of human souls. And now the rats are considered holy at this temple.



As we entered, we saw rats scurrying around the floors. A rat running across the path here and there. I took a deep breath and told myself I could do it.

We crossed the temple courtyard and then entered the temple itself. There were hand railings along the entryway and when I looked down at them, I saw that they were lined with rats. Rats were perched all along the railing. And there were many, many more rats scurrying across the temple than there were in the courtyard. I took another deep breath and went for the darshan (which is like the altar where you pray – it is the idol of the god). I took about two steps when a rat ran across one foot and then the other. This is supposed to be a very lucky thing and is considered a blessing. I screamed and ran out of the temple. Jigar, who is much braver than I am when it comes to rats, continued on. He made it to the darshan and even took the prashad (food blessed by the gods). Rats share the same prashad as the people! After a few minutes, Jigar came out to get me. He said they were doing a special pooja inside and that anything you pray for will come true if you come all the way inside the temple and pray. He asked me if I wanted to come. I told him that no, I was just fine where I was outside the temple. He went back inside. I don’t know if his prayers came true or not, but I feel pretty blessed already so I was OK with not going back in..


The next day, we went to see the fort and then we went out for a special lunch in honor of Christmas. It was kind of our Christmas dinner. We went to the Laxmi Niwas Palace and had a feast fit for a king. It was a scrumptious meal in the palace courtyard.

Bikaner was a pleasant surprise for us. We really enjoyed the fort and the palace. The rat temple was an unusual and memorable experience. It was a fun stop in our tour of Rajasthan.




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Desert Safari...

Jaisalmer, India: I’d heard of the desert safari and was wondering what all the hype was about. It is one of the more expensive things to do in India, but it is suppose to be amazing. The problem with desert safaris is that it is really hot during day time and really cold during night time. You have to consider both extremes while packing your gear. We were only going for one night, so it wasn’t an enormous undertaking.

You have to do a lot of research on your own to make sure that you are getting everything you need to survive a night in the desert. Luckily, when we were at the Deepak Guesthouse, I had mentioned to the manager (Papli) that we were interested in doing the desert safari. There was a group of 14 people with Intrepid Travels that had checked in that morning. There were people from all over the world, some from Australia, some from England, some from USA, some from Poland and some other countries. We were sure that they were most likely to do the desert safari. I spoke to Papli and asked him if it were possible for Gin & I to join this group for the desert safari. It had to be approved by the group leader, Anand, from Intrepid Travels. He was a kid in his 20’s and didn’t mind us joining the group as long as we paid for the trip. I was happy about joining this group because I knew that joining this group meant that quality was guaranteed. Another advantage was that we didn’t have to pay for the folk dance that local villagers were going to do at night in the desert. The group had already paid for it. It was only Rs.50/person extra for the folk dance anyway.

We paid Rs. 850/person for the desert safari. It included a camel ride for 2 hours the first day, snacks at sunset, folk dance after sunset followed by dinner. The following morning, we would have breakfast and another 1.5 hour camel ride back. I was all excited about this adventure.

The following day we left for the safari. They drove us about 1.5 hour into the desert where we had our camels waiting for us. Each person got their own camel to ride. I was happy about that. It does take a little getting used to riding a camel. My camel was very obedient, but Gin’s camel was a renegade. He was a young 'en, a little hot blooded crazy renegade. He had to be tied with my camel, so whenever I went fast, Gin’s camel had to try and catch up to my camel. It was fun! Neither one of us had ridden a camel before for such a length of time and that too in the desert. Now the desert was a little bit of a disappointment. It wasn’t like the pictures I had seen. It was more like barren land with bushes here and there. Lonely Planet did mention this, but I was hoping that it would be wrong. Unfortunately, they were right.


At the end of the camel ride, we finally reached what looked like sand dunes. Yay! I was really happy to see the sand dunes now. I was off my camel and on my camera. It was the best time to take pics because the sun was setting. Once I was satisfied with the pics I had taken, we were ready for some snacks and tea. We took the snacks & the tea on the sand dunes and watched the sun disappear slowly in the horizon. It was one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve ever seen so far.

After the sunset, we hung out a little longer on the sand dunes and went back to our camp site. There was a bonfire the staff had created and we were waiting for the local villagers to come and perform the folk dance & music. Once the mucisians and the dancers came, they put on an excellent show. We were all then forced to join them. The crew made sure that everyone got up and danced along with the villagers. It didn’t matter what kind of dance we did. People from all over the world were drinking and dancing in the middle of the desert with the local villagers from Jaisalmer under a beautiful starry sky. It couldn’t get any better. After everyone was exhausted, the musicians & dancers left. Everyone was hungry and ready for dinner. It was really good food, especially since everyone had spent all their energy dancing. It was starting to get really cold. Everyone started huddling around the bonfire.

We laid on our bed under the open starry sky. Gin & I were counting the number of shooting stars as our eyes started getting heavy. Once the bonfire was over, it got cold. I put on my winter jacket and pulled two layers of thick blankets, but I was still cold. Luckily, I fell asleep.

The following morning everyone woke up early and was ready to see the sunrise in the desert. It was a beautiful sunrise. It was cold, but fortunately the crew had made hot tea and snacks for breakfast. After the sunrise, we packed up and got ready to get back on our camels. Going back we took a different route altogether. Before finishing the camel ride, we had an open field where we raced our camels! While, we were racing our camel, mom & dad called from Greenfield. I barely managed to get the phone out of my pocket and handed it over to Gin. It was really interesting watching Gin try to answer the phone and race her camel at the same time. God bless technology!

Once the camel ride came to an end we stopped to have some tea. I took some pictures of the crew and we started heading back to Jaisalmer. In conclusion, it was one of the most amazing experiences we’ve ever had.

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