The Golden Triangle

These past two weeks have been quite the adventure, to say the least. On January 22 all the first year SSLA students, as well as the seven of us KEI students, all boarded onto a bus bound for Mumbai. The four hour bus ride up to Mumbai was very uneventful and we all managed to arrive at the train station. Speaking of trains I was definitely a little apprehensive of making the 18 hour train ride up to Jaipur. The conditions of the trains that people had told revealed pictures of cockroaches, mice, and bathrooms you should avoid like the plague. Yes, I was a little apprehensive, but in the back of my mind I was thinking it really couldn't be that bad right? I mean people had had similar stories of the subways in NYC and yet I was able to handle those, how bad could a sleeper train to Jaipur be?

Go figure, it wasn't that bad! The first car we were plucked down in was very quiet and clean. The "beds" left a little something to be desired. Basically it was a board with a plastic covering over it and there were six beds piled together in one area, two of which were suspended from the ceiling and you had to have monkey skills to climb into. However, overall it was not a horrible train and I did not see any cockroaches or mice running around, so I considered myself lucky, now hopefully I could hold my bladder for 18 hours and not push my luck by using the restroom.

Lena and I were moved to a different car not long after the train ride started. We had a nice cozy bench with two windows that blew in the nice breeze from the countryside as we passed it. We also got to meet some wonderful Indians from an engineering school who were also on their way to Jaipur. We bonded over shared food and playing card games, ones that Lena was able to kick butt at, I however, was the second to get eliminated. Eventually though we got moved into another car that was closer to other students from our school. We spent the next few hours getting tutored on the basic Hindi language and trying to get the proper pronunciation of our rolling r's. When it was finally time to go to bed we realized that it was quite freezing in the train and Lena and I opted to share one of the boards instead of each claiming our own. This actually turned out to be a really good idea, despite the fact that I kept getting craps in my side fro laying on one hip bone for too long.

In the morning we had a delicious breakfast from one of the train vendors at a stop and were able to warm up with some chai. A few hours later we arrived to a warm Jaipur and ventured off the train to await for our buses to the hotel. Another hour of waiting and we were all herded to another place, where we waited for another half hour for the cabs to arrive. After a very tedious wait all 63 of us were crowded into the cabs, with 6 of us per cab, and we began the journey to the hotel.

This was my first look at Jaipur and it is such a gorgeous city! Everywhere you turned there was a new roundabout with a statue or a fountain in it, dedicated to some conquering hero. The buildings were all made of a similar stone, which is how it got its nickname "The Pink City." Personally I think it resembles more of a orange city than a pink city, but it was so pretty how all the buildings matched. The cab drive was much shorter than I had expected and a after a couple wrong turns we made it to the BlueBird Hotel.

My first thought upon stepping out of the van and seeing the hotel was 'what have I gotten myself into?' I know it was not going to be the fanciest hotel ever, but seriously this one was almost as bad as the Super 8 I stayed in once in Kentucky. Except the ceiling did not leak on us here and the toilet actually flushed. Which I should be grateful for those few good things! And we did have hot water, sometimes, if you caught the thermostat in a good mood. Thank goodness the cockroaches avoided our room, though there were rumors from the other students that they were not quite as lucky. We did receive breakfast every morning! Ok it was usually anywhere between a half hour to an hour late, but it got us used to Indian Standard Time rather quickly.

After settling into our rooms we opted to go out to the market place with some of the new friends that we had made on the train. Lena and I ended up in different groups, which was kind of the first time we had been apart the whole trip. It was a blast getting to meet the other girls though and they were so helpful in helping me haggle with the shop owners. I successfully managed to haggle for a scarf, two skirts, two shirts two pairs of shoes and a couple hanging decorations. All in all I came out spending less than $50 for all that, not too bad on a shopping trip. We also got some awesome ice cream from a sweet shop and I got to see my first elephants in India! They were giving rides down the market street and were so huge! I wanted to ride one, but opted to wait for a different day. Bad decision on my part because we didn't see them again at the markets. After having dinner at Chowlas it was off to bed before venturing into the literary festival tomorrow.