Jaipur, India

Road Trip! As I said in the previous post, after sunrise we hopped in the van and started our drive to Jaipur. The van was a nice 11 person van with comfortable seats and air conditioning. In the van was Lara, Colleen, Helene, Mark, Kami, our helper, the driver and myself. The six of us (all mentioned except the helper and driver) chatted the whole way as we watched the Indian country side go by. I take back what I said in an earlier post about Turks having the craziest drivers. Indians are the craziest drivers by far. Most of the roads in India are two lanes with no shoulder, and that's being generous. Using the road is every possible vehicle with wheels, plus people, and animal herds. Because there are so many objects on the road drivers simply use the other side of the road as the passing lane. When you're driving in the city and you go into the opposite direction at 20 mph it isn't a big deal, but when you dive into the other direction at 45 mph and there is a large truck coming at you going the same speed, it's a little different. For the first half hour on the road it was fairly disturbing. Our guide told us that just a few months ago the tour company used to put a curtain behind the driver so that the passengers in the back of the van couldn't see what was happening. Our guide also informed us that most drivers believe in destiny and if it is their time to go then it is their time to go and there is nothing they can do about it. Not very reassuring.

On the topic of Indian driving and road conditions. Indian roads are completely different than roads we've seen anywhere else. Although there are lots of cars, they are definitely a minority on the road. Most of the traffic on the roads is motorcycles, bikes, and 3-wheeled tuck-tucks. The tuck-tucks are just what you've seen in movies, they are 3 wheeled vehicles with a roof on them. Bikes and motorcycles are the same as anywhere else. The biggest exception is how many people fit in/on a vehicle. Anywhere else in the world a motorcycle is a one person vehicle, occasionally a two person vehicle. In India, if only one person is riding a motorcycle it's being underutilized. Two, three, four people on a motorcycle was the norm. Apparently, in India the motorcycle is the family vehicle. Some of you might be thinking 'how can four people fit on one motorcycle'? It's actually quite simple. The father gets on first and assumes the driving position. Then the oldest child gets in behind the father. The mother gets in next, behind the oldest child at the rear of the motorcycle. The youngest child, typically a baby, gets in last in front of the father, just behind the steering wheel. I can't tell you how many times we saw a toddler behind the handle bars of a moving motorcycle. As for helmets, they are very rare. Our guide informed us that a helmet law has just been implemented in India and people are starting to buy helmets. However, the merits of helmets aren't appreciated, simply the legality. So the only helmets that people buy, or are even available, are $1 helmets that provide as much protection, possibly less, as a turban. On top of that, it is more common for riders to have a helmet on the arm then on their head. On top of that, the helmet law is only applicable to men, women don't have to wear helmets because it might mess up their hair.


Continuing on the road subject, although when the road is wide enough for multiple lanes the lanes are marked, people never obey lane markings. Drivers simply go where ever there is less resistance. When they pass another vehicle they honk their horn. With so many vehicles on the road and all passing frequently, the road is very, very loud. Drivers are actually encouraged to use their horn. It is a law that all trucks have a sign posted on the back saying "Use horn." The trucks in India are very cool. I think most trucks are owned by the drivers. I say this because no two trucks in India are the same. They are all painted different and many with really cool paintings. Although we didn't see any truck nuts, we did see the Indian version of them.

Finishing the side note on India roads. Unlike most other countries, there are almost no overpasses in India. This does create more traffic, but it also means your truck can be as filled as you can make it as there are no height restrictions. We saw trucks that were filled 20 feet high, easily. Some trucks would be filled so much that their cargo would be hanging 5 feet out the bed and dragging on the ground. Crazy.


Back to our road trip. After a few dozen games of playing chicken with other Indian drivers we arrived at Fatehpur Sikri. Fatehpur Sikri is a deserted, red sandstone city built around 1570. The city was your standard Indian fort; a walled city with red brick buildings inside. It was pretty cool.



We got back on the road of death and headed for Jaipur. We arrived in Jaipur in the early evening. In our first morning in Jaipur we went to the Amber Fort and Palace. The fort is on the top of hill and the only way to get to the top of the hill is to take an elephant! Taking an elephant in Amber Fort is like taking a taxi anywhere else, you just hop on and your driver takes you to where you want to go. The elephant ride was very cool. Once we got to the fort we toured around. This fort was slightly different from the other forts in that it had Anderson Cooper in it. Yes, Anderson Cooper, host of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, was walking around the Amber Fort just like us. Although Lara was the one who spotted Anderson, our friend Colleen snagged the best photo of him completely by accident. She was trying to take a picture of some sexually explicit tiles that are in the Amber Fort when some guy came out the door and got in her picture, she later noticed that that guy was Anderson Cooper. For you celebrity buffs, Anderson was travelling with one other guy, which we have a picture of. We were waiting for them to hold to hands so we could sell that picture to TMZ. Anderson Cooper won't say he's gay, but he's ranked as the second most powerful gay man in America by Out magazine.

Once we got our fill of celebrity sightings we left the Amber Fort to check out the city of Jaipur. Inside the city of Jaipur is the City Palace, Jantar Mantar, and some good shopping. The City Palace is similar to other Indian palaces. This palace had a more English feel and it had an interesting armory museum with lots of crazy weapons. The Jantar Mantar was totally different. The Jantar Mantar is an Indian observatory made up of about two dozen sun dials. The sun dials are used primarily for astrological purposes. There is one sun dial for each zodiac sign, several sun dials to determine the zodiac sign, the world's largest sun dial, and the world's most precise sun dial.

The complex wasn't what we were expecting at all and it was a very cool surprise. We finished off our city tour by doing some shopping. We checked out a couple craft stores, an antique store, a jewelry store, and a textile store. The coolest purchase of the trip occurred at the antique store. Mark purchased a six foot tall wooden statue of Ganesha. The Ganesha will go well with the one ton Buddha statue that Mark bought in Cambodia and currently resides in his backyard. Helene expressed her reservations about where a six foot tall Ganesha statue would fit in their house, but after Mark bought her some nice diamond earrings at the jewelry store, her questioning subsided.

We finished the evening by having dinner with a royal family. One of the former princes of Rajasthan (the state that we were in) had a large home in the center or Jaipur that his family still maintains and lives in. The descendants of this royal family let us into their home and ate dinner with us. The entrance to the house is from the main street of Jaipur, which is loud, busy, and filled with beggars and homeless. The house is large, with several courtyards and an outdoor sitting area. The food was nothing special but it was fun interacting with a traditional Indian family. We also ate with other tourists who were travelling separately from us, but with the same company. All of them were over the age of 70 and would have absolutely nothing to do with the dinner and left after dinner was served. We knew we would be spending more time with them in a few days and were really excited.

The next morning we packed up and started on another road trip to Pushkar, for the Pushkar Camel Festival.