After celebrating our 2 year wedding anniversary in Hampi, we spent our last sunny morning on the rooftop for breakfast. We were sad to say goodbye to Rocky and the tranquil bedrock town, however we were excited to keep moving and ready to hit the heavily populated, narrow streets of the province of Rajasthan. We tried to book another comfortable 2nd class train but were unsuccessful and had to settle instead for an air conditioned Volvo bus for our 24 journey to Jodhpur, the blue city.
The bus was tight for room and lacked a bathroom. People would just holler for the bus driver to stop when in need, gathering groups of people to do their business side by side on the edge of the highway. We opted to attempt to drink as little water as possible and wait for the designated eating stops to use the dirty squatter bathrooms instead.
When we arrived in Jodhpur it was later than we had anticipated, but luckily we had a place in mind where we wanted to stay. Once again, the gates at this guesthouse were closed and we had to make a small ruckus to wake somebody up. They were happy to see us though, and we felt very welcome. The owner took us up to the top floor to show us the great view of the city and the very nearby and popular city fort. He offered us his best room, popular for filming Bollywood movies and housing famous people. Unfortunately the room was just a little bit (way) out of our budget, so we settled for a room on the bottom floor for 600 Rupees ($10).
When we woke up in the morning we went back up to the rooftop for breakfast and were able to see the same views from the night before in broad day light. Most of the city was painted in blue, a trend that spread across the city beginning from past aristocracy.
We took a short rickshaw ride through the labyrinth of tiny streets, weaving and honking our way through the human and animal traffic, and swerving around several cows eating garbage off the streets. Before we knew it we made it up 400ft to the entrance of the Mehrangarh Fort. It is one of the biggest forts in India popularly known for it’s intricate carvings and cannon ball imprints left behind from past war times. The fort is broken up into several eloquent rooms holding palanquins (elephant riding seats made for royalty), howdahs (carriages for the royal women), royal weaponry, art, musical instruments, costumes, furniture and old cannons while also offering a breath-taking view of the city. We even ran into an old man in costume sitting on a ledge in the courtyard smoking his opium pipe and offering his stash to us for a ridiculous price. 
There we met a couple of friendly Canadians from Montreal (Max and Shanee) and spent the rest of the day making our way through the fort with them, sharing travel stories and listening to our detailed audio guides. We stopped by a dazzling white marble temple before lunch at a local Indian veg restaurant and ordered Channa Masala (chickpeas in a spicy curry tomato sauce) and a Thali set with Dal (something that tastes like spicy split pea soup), veg curry, rice, pickles and chapatti. Yum!
As the sun was finally loosing it’s strength, we made it to our last stop for the day, Mandore Garden. It was a once well kept garden a few kilometres outside of Jodhpur crawling with hundreds of black faced monkeys. Nowadays, let’s just say it was not very well kept. We watched the monkeys swing from the trees, pick gnats out of their baby’s hair, and fight over the bananas that were being fed to them by the locals.
On our last night in Jodhpur it rained so much that the thin and chaotic streets of the city became flooded with water and were impossible to walk through. We had plans for Max and Shanee to meet us on our rooftop for dinner and drinks and were afraid they wouldn’t be able to make it. Thankfully the streets drained out within an hour and we were able to enjoy a very late dinner with traditional west Indian music blaring from a near by local wedding.
The next morning we took an early and packed local bus into the desert for 6 hours, to get to Jaisalmer. It was a small dusty city on the border of Rajasthan and Pakistan, and we were going there to enjoy our long awaited camel safari. We checked into the Swastika Guesthouse, ironically recommended to us by our Jewish friends and set out on our camels the very same evening. Swastikas and Jewish stars are found all over India. For the Indian people they represent truth, compassion, tolerance and innocence. Our camels were very cute and friendly, and carried us along with our food and water for the excursion into the middle of the desert. After a nice long ride, we settled down at a small village, watched the sun go down on a nearby sand dune, ate dinner and drank chai with the village people. We slept under the stars on cots with sandy blankets and no shelter, hoping not to come across any scorpions throughout the night, but it was wonderful. It was such a simple and peaceful experience, and we were amazed that these villagers lived their entire lives out there with what we would consider nothing and were still so happy. 
The bus looked as though it was 100 years old and had been continuously driving around the dusty streets of India with the windows wide open. It was a non A/C sleeper bus with double beds that you would never want to lie down in, let alone have any part of your bare body touch filthy carpet like covering. We were in complete disgust; already in the middle of a cranky day, knowing that we were going to be stuck in our little box of a “sleeper” for the next 24 hrs. The ride was just as horrible as we could have imagined. We were assigned the very last compartment in the back of the bus, making the already bumpy road situation even bumpier. At one point we went over such a big bump that it sent Alice flying up and smashing her head on the ceiling of the bus. Shortly after that, the bus went over another bump causing a huge smash and then the bus was stagnant for the next 2 hours. It was broken down. We almost decided to get out of the bus at that point to find some other (ANY other) way out of there but the sky was getting dark and we figured we would just have to suck it up and roll with the next 20 hours. We laid out some clothes to lay on and popped in our headphones, played some of our favorite tunes (we’re in love with the new FUN album) and got lost in another world. That is, until the bus stopped again at 1am for ‘dinner’. We had no desire to eat, we just wanted to be done with this bus ride from hell. We weren’t sleeping at that point, but if we were, we would have been woken up by bang after bang while the bus was getting the roof loaded up with sack after sack of G-D knows what. It sounded like the roof was going to cave in. On a happy note, we did eventually fall asleep (some sleepy time Gravols really helped with that) and by the time we woke up we were 1 hour away from our final destination. It was a new day, with a couple of freshly positive attitudes, and before we knew it the 30 hour nightmare was finally over. 
We took a quick rickshaw ride to a hotel restaurant with some good Wi-Fi, A/C, and great breakfast and spent almost 2 hours relaxing and unwinding before heading to the great Taj Mahal. Besides Dave getting sent out of the security line twice to walk 15 minutes down the street in the blistering heat to lock away his lighter and our laptop before being let in, we had a very enjoyable time on the grounds. The gardens leading to the big World Heritage Site were well kept and nicely groomed, something really special to see in India. The Taj Mahal itself was really impeccable with Persian architecture, built entirely from white marble and precious stones.
The next day we set out to pre-book some train tickets to our last stop in India, Varanasi. We hopped into a rickshaw in search of the New Delhi train station, but ended up at the drivers friends’ travel agency instead. He tried to sell us on a package deal that was way over our budget and when we asked for 2 simple train tickets, he smiled and sent us out the door. It took us 4 hours to find our way to the actual train station because we sadly and very imbaracingly got suckered into this scam 4 times that day. When we finally made it to the train station (by foot) we new we had to find the tourist counter, but got veered away yet again by a man telling us the counter was under construction. He sent us into another rickshaw and directed us down the street to the “temporary” office. Our driver left the parking lot on the wrong side of the road and got pulled over by the police. Instead of just paying the small fine he began to argue with the policeman and almost ran him over several times in the process. When he dropped us off at yet another travel agent, we were livid, and went straight back to our safe haven hotel to escape the crazy scam-filled streets of New Delhi. We were so thankful to have stretched the budget on our hotel, and ended up booking the train tickets there, for a not so small commission fee.
We only had one day in Delhi left to roam around and explore. We didn’t see much, but spent a few hours walking around the dusty over populated streets around our hotel before our train ride out of there.
We arrived in Varanasi the next morning. Varanasi is nick named the holy capital of India, being the oldest and still inhabited in the world. We stayed at a hostel on the Ganges river right beside the ‘Manikarnika ghat’, built in 1302. It is a place where people all over India bring their family members to be cremated before being released into the river. It is believed that if your ashes are thrown into the river you complete the cycle of re-incarnation and are released to heaven.
The old city was a another maze of tiny, narrow streets that we would have never been able to navigate around with out a young ‘friend’ we made there. If you can picture the beginning scene of the movie ‘Slum Dog Millionaire’ where the boy is running through the narrow streets of Mumbai, you can picture us here. The kid led us through the small streets making quick lefts and rights, going through what seemed like peoples houses, pushing past people, cows, goats, jumping over puddles of mud, dirt and feces just to show us all the small temples scattered around the city. The kid made us laugh and was very knowledgeable about the locals and his Hindu culture, so we invited him out to dinner with us. We had such a good time with him that when he asked us if he could show around again the next day we graciously accepted. He told us that he told his father about us and he wanted to meet us. So after running through the labyrinth style streets again we arrived at his uncles’ silk factory. They gave a us a quick tour of the factory where we could see the locals working at their finest in the small, dark and sweaty rooms behind their big silk machines. After our tour they invited us in to sit down for some Chai, and that’s when it happened.
The kid's uncle started pulling out sheet after sheet of duvet covers, pillow cases, scarves, saris, you name it. We were stuck, and pressured into buying their goods by the one and only person in India we considered to be truly genuine. We bought a couple of scarves, left our friend and his uncle behind, and spent the last few hours of our time in India at the train station getting stared down and asked to have our photos taken with a very sour taste in our mouths. We were more than ready to leave India.
From the most challenging point of our trip so far,
With love from the end of India,
D’Alice
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