The Pink City
Trip Start
Oct 30, 2005
1
38
122
Trip End
Ongoing
Jaipur,
India
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
We had arranged accommodation before we arrived (not without a lot of trouble getting someone to agree to take us that late at night). Our hotel had promised to have someone come and pick us up at the station as the rickshaw drivers are meant to be pretty aggressive in Jaipur. The hotel had told us that their driver would have a card with our name on it so we would be able to identify him.
As soon as we had stepped off the train, we were intercepted by about three rickshaw touts, one telling us the exit was one way and two telling us the exit was at another. They were very persistent and we chose to ignore them. We managed to find the right exit but no driver, just about 20 rickshaw touts surrounding us
Amber Fort (1)
. We walked up and down the front of the train station ignoring them and trying to find our driver. They kept telling us "your driver is not coming, they never come this late at night". We decided to go back into the station to call the hotel. They confirmed that the driver was waiting for us and he had a card with our name on it.So out we went into the mob of touts again, with one guy being particularly persistent, telling us that he was our driver. We asked him his name, and it wasn't the name the hotel had given us. He said the "other driver" sent him instead. He left us alone for a while and then came back knowing Glenn's name. We thought he might of seen our driver with the card and got his name that way. We asked him which country we were from (we had told the hotel), and he didn't know. He then came back to us and said "Australia" - we had Qantas tags on our bags (yes that was stupid!). By this time all of the touts had cottoned on that Glenn was "Glenn from Australia" and they all decided that they were now our drivers! The persistent one came back, again insisting that he was our driver. He had a mobile phone on him and so we asked him if we could call the hotel from his mobile. He said he had no credit, and by this stage we thought we had pretty much confirmed the dodginess of this guy. We had just about had enough when Glenn asked to see his license to confirm his identity
Amber Fort (2)
. He wouldn't show it to us. Now almost an hour after we had got off the train and totally fed up with the hassle, we decided to go to the pre-paid auto rickshaw stand and just pay for a rickshaw to take us to the hotel. As we were paying, the persistent one pulls out his license for us, which did't really prove anything and we just bluntly told him to get lost. After a bit of swearing and carrying on, he jumped into a taxi and sped off. We got into the rickshaw and made it safely to the hotel, only to see the "persistent one" out the front having an argument with the owner of the hotel. He was our driver! We felt so bad! We apologised to the driver, and let him and the hotel owner continue to argue about the whole situation.A couple of days later we hired an auto-rickshaw for the day to see the sights of the city. Our driver "Mehraj" was a pretty cool young guy, who loved Australians ("Australians are God to him" apparently!). We spent the day zooming around Jaipur, taking in the City Palace, Jantar Mahar (Observatory), Hawa Mahal (Pink Palace), Royal Gaitor and Jal Mahal (Water Palace). After that we went to the Amber Fort a few kilometres away, which was probably the best sight we had seen up to that point. The view was beautiful and Christie made another new little friend (The little girls in India just seem fascinated by her). After that Mehraj took us up Nahargarh, a nice view point of Jaipur (which also had a fort) - a bit of a struggle in the little rickshaw as it was such a steep climb to the top
Amber Fort (3)
. We made it in time to see the sunset over Jaipur, which was truly beautiful. The only thing missing was the pink in the "pink city", which Jaipur is meant to be famous for.The next day we went shopping with Mehraj in tow. First stop was the post office and our first experience with India Post. Two hours later we finally emerged, owing Mehraj 80 Rupees because the post office didn't have change! Ever patient, Mehraj took us around to the shops we wanted to go to, and then took us to a couple that he knew of. We were suspicious of course, but he didn't put us under any pressure and we did come out of it with some pretty good deals on a few things, so we were happy.
We had bought our bus tickets to Pushkar in the afternoon, planning to leave the next day. Unfortunately India had other plans for Christie and the Delhi Belly struck again, so Pushkar had to be put off for another day (we didn't want to risk a bus trip!).
We managed to postpone the bus trip without too much hassle and we set off for Pushkar the following day.
