Jaipur

On the 11th of September we left Agra, we grabbed our backpacks and our bananas and started a 5h30 trip to Jaipur. Mr. Lucky (our driver) recommended us to visit two places on the way to Jaipur: Ghost City and Monkey Temple. Due to our tight budget we decided to visit only the Monkey Temple, Kika was a BIT scared about the monkeys but with Pedro's motivational speaches we made it.

The Monkey Temple, also known as Galtaji, is the temple of the God of the Sun built around the holy water springs of the mountains.

During our visit we were surprised by the community that lives around the temple and uses the holy water tanks as their "swimming pools" in perfect harmony with the Monkeys of the Temple. Maybe because it is a remote location, people were even more surprised about our look/color, kids stared at us with curiosity and some of them were brave enough to ask us for pictures, happiness was on their faces.

When we arrived in Jaipur, Mr. Lucky recommended us a guest house to stay for the 4 days. It seemed a bit far from the center so we only reserved the room for that night, we left our backpacks and started exploring the Pink City hoping to find a cheap and better located accommodation. After several attempts, we found one small hotel inside the city fort, perfect location - the heart of the city. We are starting to get better on our negotiation skills, we got a room presented for 1300 ruppies for 750/night.

Jaipur is a city of commerce, colors, bazaars, spices, textiles, shoes, fabrics, jewelry, food and so on. It is known as Pink City or Romantic City due to the colors of the buildings and to the gardens around the city. Jaipur, built in 1727, has a specific beauty due to the facades of the pink buildings, palaces and monuments.

Along our walk around Jaipur we decided to try more Indian food, we had a samosa in the middle of the afternoon and for dinner a bunch of veggy food full of strong spices, then IT HAPPENED... our first intestinal fight.

Since yesterday we had the "Intestinal fight" we thought that eating some fruit could be a good idea.. something that it's assumed to be simple and easy became a serious challenge: Buy apples. We walked around the stands of fruit and it seemed like the vendors were charging us a lot of money for a simple apple... in one stand they asked for 150 rups for 1kg we almost bought but we decided to ask to a few more vendors and our final deal was 60 rups for 1kg. The tourist price is something we can't runaway from, whenever people see us they try to get more of us. We understand that they need but sometimes it is a little bit too much. Once in a while, people start talking to us out of nothing, and we believe that they are only curious and trying to connect to a different culture, they are nice and seem interested in us but at the end, there is always the invitation to go into their store a few meters away or to become our driver, etc. We end up asking ourselves if we will ever be able to genuinely connect with an Indian in India...

During the rest of the day we walked around the streets, bazaars and palaces of Jaipur we stopped for another snack but we are still not confortable choosing restaurants so we feel that we are eating less than what we should.

At night we decided to buy the book "Rough Guides - India", it's an extra expense but we believe that this very complete guide about India will give us the information we need about hotels, places to eat/visit and other small tips that are always welcome in a trip like this.
Based on our book and because we slept late, we started our 3rd day going to a recommended restaurant for lunch (Anokhi) and on the way we would have the opportunity to see the Government Central Museum. BAD IDEA... there are no heroes in this world so thinking that we would be able to walk 2h under the mid-day sun was a big mistake. We walked, walked, walked and by the time we reached the restaurant we were exhausted and Pedro seriously felt weak, almost passing out... man...  The meal was good, a bit pricy but good.. after the restaurant (4pm) we went back to the hotel to get some rest and there we stayed for a few hours. It was a good lesson for the upcoming days, from now on we can walk early morning, take some rest between 12pm and 3pm and then we can start again. With Pedro still feeling weak we didn't go on any big trips during the rest of day, we walked a bit more around the bazaars and bought one bag and 2 scarves, perfect for the desert!! With today's "episode", feeling seriously weak, we learned how food and water are SO important for our life, curiously in the middle of the day, a child tried to "steal"/beg for Kika's bottle of water but we refused. A few steps ahead, we immediately regret, it was just water for us why didn't we give it to the child?! In the middle of the journey, Pedro started to feel very week and after that, a random guy asked us for water, Pedro immediately gave it to him.

A lesson from today is that in our "normal" lives, we eat and drink whenever and whatever we want. In this trip, because of our short budget, (1500 rups/day - $22/day to sleep, eat, visit, etc) we have to think about when is it the right time to eat and what is the amount of money we can spend. Seems nothing but it makes us understand what people go through when they have nothing. But even having nothing, we have seen poor people feeding the animals, cows, pidgins, pigs, goats, etc... if we think twice before giving the bottle of water to a child, how can they be so kind and give the food to the animals?! Another lesson learned..

The 4th day was: Shopping Day! Using all the bargaining experience from the previous days, we decided to buy a few more items that would be useful in the upcoming months: pants for Pedro, pants for me and sandals for Pedro. We got good deals, a lot of bargaining in between but at the end everybody was happy. As an example, people tried to sell us one pair of pants for 350 rups and at the end 2 pairs were 350... maybe this skills are something we need to add on our resumes.
We followed another recommendation from our new book rough guides and went to Ganesh Restaurant and it was probably the best restaurant we went so far... we had the Ganesh Special and it was delicious. A restaurant that we would have never get in if it wasn't for the book. Of course we went back for dinner.

Nice memories from Jaipur, tomorrow we will have another adventure.. 12h train to Jaisalmer. Wish us luck!

Kika & Pedro