A Day in Jaipur

We woke up balls early after drinking a massive amount of chai at the hotel restaurant the night before... god, I miss chai... We had a 6 am train or something, and it left close to the actual departure time. An on time train was welcomed since we didn't have bunks like the other trains. We sat in a group of maybe 8 seats; 4 on each side with a chair in the middle. Sitting across from us were two German guys around our age. They had been in India for about a month (during their 3 month European vacation...) and we were wondering if they still had both of their kidneys. We had some good conversations with them for parts of the train ride.

As we arrived at Jaipur we concretely decided against any helper monkeys - tuk tuks. And did we decide against them. I think we left the station with a group of people who just kept following us while constantly pushing us to give into their demands. Did we use "cielo" here? I think this is where Shannon dropped the "cielo" bomb to the one Indian dude who got pissed... gave an evil eye, threw his hands up in the air with a "No! You cielo!" hahaha. Awesome.

We walked, got lost, met up with the Germans who were also lost, parted ways near our street, got lost again, walked and walked, argued, ate lunch, still being lost, gave up and got a new hotel. The hotel was a recommendation by a young guy on a motorcycle named, Lucky. Keep this name in mind, because this is a trip of ironies. After checking into the hotel we went out to search the town... specifically, I wanted to go to the place that had $2 tailored shirts. I finally found this damn place and then got the cold "your not Indian" shoulder... Oh, yea? it will take 2 weeks to cut a shirt... meanwhile your tailoring one for the guy who just walked in the door? bastards.

I found Tim outside getting some cigarettes. Our next tuker, Lucky, joins the story. He was trying to get hired for a while and we finally gave in when we struck a pretty good deal for the Amber Fort. The fort was about a 30 min ride through the town and the the hilly outskirts. Lucky, told us about his family life and how he is married, had an affair, got the other girl pregnant, abortion... just your everyday Joe. He also likes to smoke weed. A likeable guy.

We passed some elephants and camels along the way and then arrived at this massive fort up on a hill. Extremely huge. There were two forts actually... the older, higher than the newer one. Either another King wanted to show he could build another giant fort or he got sick of having to go so far up the mountain to get to the other one. We didn't feel like paying to see half of the fort so we tried to sneak by to no avail. Watch out for the grimy looking Americans. Definitely so, i didnt wash my pants the whole trip and only brought one pair. After being turned away by 3 different guards we walked up to the older fort. We took an out of the way path that followed the wall and after about 20 min of hiking it, we ended up at another... wall. Great path. We ended up getting an uninterrupted view of the lower fort which made up for the sudden stop in our hike.

Lucky, was down at the parking lot gambling in his down time. I guess he lost cuz he had to buy everyone there a small shot of chai. On the way back to town, his tuk-tuk broke down, and we changed automobiles. Next stop was downtown Jaipur.

Things start get fuzzy here; he wants us to have some beers with him and meet him back at the gate at 7... alright we say, but we might be a little late. This is our trip by the way and we are going to go on our own schedules. Needless to say, we meet some college kids, buy some bangles, roam the streets, and miss our 7 o'clock deadline. Lucky is nowhere to be found so we haggle some other tucker to drive us back to the hotel. Lucky had yet to paid so we thought it was weird that he wasn't there... and he basically refused our payment in the hopes that he would get some beers or something else...

Back at the hotel...
We get a call to our room...
the return of Lucky!

Response:
Right, Lucky, aptly named, was a skinny wank with teeth that looked like they were going to fall out of his head any second...he was cool at first, but as Hahn said, India always wins...we had a full day up until this point, and as we wondered the through the market section, which was extremely packed with people, and very dark and maze like (it was a god damn labyrinth sans the minotaur), we instantly knew we weren't going to meet Lucky on time, and just hoped he'd stick around for a bit past 7 (really, what else would he have to do?....no school, his only job all day was to tool us around, and hang out and get paid?)...Anyway, along our walkings we met up with some college bound guys who wanted to know all about what they would get paid in America with their tech degrees. They almost shit their pants when they realized we weren't kidding, you could literally see the dollar signs in eyes. So we meandered with them, went down some real strange alleys, including one with about 100 motorcycles lined up every which direction (a person could make a killing as a mechanic down there) and met up with another kid who sold us on a "the best bangle shop in all of Jaipur". And he might have been right. Those were some pretty cool bangles. Any way, after finding our way out, we finally made it back to where we first entered, and to no surprise, the Luckster was nowhere to be found. So we haggled the hell out of 5 tukkers, all pitting them against each other, which cracked them up (they are all just standing there waiting with nothing to do, and getting a ride this late at night is just a bonus...I'm assuming all the old guys anyway would rather stand outside and shoot the shit rather then go home to the wife and 13 kids). So some dude takes us home, and we get dropped off, and head inside. And sure as shit, Lucky tracks us down, and gets the head of the hotel to call us up and has us come down to pay Lucky. Haha...but the Lucky doesn't want money.