Jaipur

Rush hour in Rajasthan
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What did a camel say to an elephant in Jaipur?

“Watch how you’re driving, you moron.” Then, the elephant responded:

What did a camel say to an elephant in Jaipur?

“Sorry, I was distracted by the jay walking pig.” The pig, caught in the middle, said:

Dancing Cobra
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“Don’t blame me, the snake charmer and his hissing cobra scared me,” to which the cobra replied:

“I was just trying to get your attention to this white-skinned, blonde Polish tourist staring at us with his jaw dropped to the ground. I have never seen anything so weird in my life!”

Well, that’s how I imagine this scene would have played if the animals really talked. Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, may not be as big as Delhi, but it certainly beats the capital in diversity. Here, rickshaws compete not only with busses and suicidal pedestrians, but also with elephants and camels. Cows, dogs, and donkeys fight for food with huge, self-assured pigs. There are snake charmers, monkeys stealing shopping bags from unsuspecting shoppers, men wearing colorful turbans, rich-like-a-British-queen maharajas playing polo in their boredom, and all the while ordinary people, even poorer than those in Delhi, scrape a living from the dusty desert with reason-defying tenacity. If somebody wrote an Indian version of Alice in Wonderland, instead of falling through the rabbit hole, she would simply take a train from Delhi to Jaipur.

Rajasthani head wear
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I arrived in Jaipur yesterday. Although I could not imagine poverty greater than that in Delhi, Jaipur proved me wrong. Maybe it’s because, unlike in Delhi, in Rajasthan poverty exists alongside the opulence and care-free living of the local maharajas. During the city tour, the Western tourists kept asking a tour guide how this could be. How can the rich keep building palaces while the people on the streets are starving? The guide gave a tortuous answer and the tourists felt unconvinced. It is indeed difficult to reconcile these disparities from a Western perspective. In fact, I cannot think of any other country where wealth and extreme poverty are so widespread and institutionalized. It is no surprise that the major religions of India embrace the concept of karma. Karma enables the rich to function almost guilt-free amid the sea of poverty while, at the same time, the poor accept their fate with unquestioning stoicism. After all, if your existence is determined by your deeds in your past life, then there is little you can do about it. But I digress…

I am freezing in Jaipur. The night temperature drops to near zero (C) and my guest house put me in an attic with open windows and no heating. At night, I put on every piece of clothing I had and covered myself with two blankets, and still could not stop shivering. On the bright side, my room costs $3.15 per night. I could have gone even cheaper ($1.05) if I stayed in a shared room. I decided to splurge though, and get a private room. :)

I keep sampling the street food, sipping delicious chai, and searching food stalls for local sweets. I love Indian sweets for one reason only - lots of cardamom. Lord, this spice makes things so delectable! Today, I went for an Ayurvedic massage where I had warm, aromatic oil poured all over me for almost two hours. I must say, it felt good. Then, I had my charkas analyzed and declared unbalanced, along with my third eye being blocked. I tried to explain to the guru that I have not taken a shower in more than three days and the only clean, unblocked parts of my body are my ears, but he did not take it. There was no other way but to buy a magic pendant with some special crystal in it to save me from quick death. You won’t believe it, but it just happened that the guru owned a jewelry store and he happened to have my life-saving pendant for sale. :) I thanked my lucky stars for this miraculous coincidence and quickly bought the magic cure. Whew, I dread to think what would have happened if I did not meet the guru. Now I can relax though. I am saved. :)

As I am writing this, I’ve already left Jaipur for Jaisalmer, where I am going to join a camel caravan and visit some remote desert villages and oases.