Travelling in Rajasthan in February 2008
Jaipur >> Shekhawati >> Pushkar >> Jaisalmer >> Jodhpur
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I made a 3-week trip to Rajasthan, covering Jaipur, Shekhawati, Pushkar, Jaisalmer and Jodhpur in February this year. Starting now is a series of posts on the experiences of travelling in Rajasthan.
It’s a pleasant winter afternoon in Delhi. Sun shines brightly, keeping the cold and fog at bay and making me feel cheerful and energetic. The leafy environs of Bikaner House, Rajasthan Tourism’s office in Delhi, looks almost like a small forest. It is such a nice day that I don’t feel like leaving. I want to continue my stay here till the days come when the burning sun becomes unbearable and Delhi’s best days of the year are a past. But I have come here to leave, in search of the romance of the desert and remains of its past.
It’s a relief to see buses lined up to go to Jaipur; I don’t have to wait for long before the next one departs. I walk into the booking counter – a typically gloomy government office where a sleepy man tears a ticket and thrusts it past the counter at me. I am lucky to have exact change; a few people without it are brushed aside and sent away in an unfriendly manner. When you do business with government, you always work on their terms, even if you are a customer.
But Rajasthan Tourism is still better than a normal government office – it actually works. The buses are kept well and the seats are clean. Windows shut properly and are weather sealed to keep the cold wind outside. Even better, they seem to have heating in the bus – something I have never seen anywhere before. But the moderate weather requires neither heating nor cooling.
It takes a long time to put urban sprawl of Delhi behind us. What immediately follows is the unsightly buildings of Gurgaon that rise steeply and haphazardly – it seems no less chaotic than a war zone. But beyond all that is the countryside with open landscapes spreading far and wide interspersed with tiny houses here and there. Mustard fields spread all the way to the horizon, and the carpet of yellow flowers floating on the lush green plants is a sight that I am going to relish for most my next three weeks of stay in Rajasthan.
Half-way through the journey, the bus stops for a tea-break at the appropriately named place called Mid-Way Restaurant. That’s another Rajasthan Tourism enterprise, once again giving me an impression that things actually work there. It’s not just a restaurant but a hotel and tourist complex, with rooms, a lounge bar, a clean and well maintained restaurant, ATM, trinket shops and everything that a tourist can do with. But it’s all the same at some level when it comes to government – the staff are not the friendliest I have seen in a restaurant and take their own sweet time to be at service.
Back at the comfortable bus, yellow and green landscapes outside and a book on my lap keep me occupied through the 7-hour journey. The bus is late by an hour to arrive at Jaipur and it is dark when I alight from the bus. No sooner I am there, I am overwhelmed by touts rushing in to be at my service – “cheap hotel.. auto-rickshaw.. coolie…”
Half a dozen of them pounce on me together and remind me of my days of running around frantically to escape them in Shimla last year, and at Agra much before. But I am seasoned now, take them all with ease and engage them in a conversation effortlessly.
I tell the touts that I am waiting for my contact in Jaipur to come and pick me up. But they don’t take to my story immediately and persist for some time. I am relieved from them only when another bus arrives and shifts their attention to likely victims arriving in it. But one man remains by my side, hopeful. My conversation with him is predictable, and is exactly same as it would happen in any bus stop in any touristy place.
‘Sir, you want Rickshaw?’
I tell him someone is coming to pick me up, but he is insistent.
‘Sir hotel-wotel? I will take you to a cheap hotel.. very nice. Give me only ten rupees for the rickshaw’
‘No thank you,’ I smile and tell him again, ‘someone will pick me up’.
‘ok sir, I will wait with you; if your contact doesn’t come, you come with me.’
This was fine with me, and I accept. I had spoken to my contact before alighting the bus and he was already on his way. But the tout is still hopeful and tries to distract me. After a brief pause, I was lost in my own thoughts when I hear him speak again – ‘Sir, where do you want to go?’
I laugh at this question and ask him why would he want to know.
‘sir rickshaw? hotel – wotel?’ he smiles and asks me again, still hoping for some business. We went through another round of conversation telling the same things to each other before my contact arrived and bailed me out.
Continued at Seeing Jaipur with Raju
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