Greetings from Jaipur, India 10/13/08

Today I flew from Udaipur to Jaipur. After about 10 hours of sleeping like the dead last night I finally felt like a new woman ready to take on the world. Which was a darn good thing. Raj and driver picked me up from the hotel at 6, when it was still dark and whisked me away to the airport. This time I knew what to expect and was able to navigate things much better. It also helped that the airport folks in Udaipur were much more friendly than the ones in Delhi.

At Jaipur I was collected at the airport by ? and Sanjay. Now the fellows in Udaipur were younger than me and all business. I could tell right off this was going to be better because Vikram and Sanjay (the driver is Sanjay, whom I spent the time looking at the back of his head) were a laugh a minute to the hotel. As I was checking in guide #2 appeared, he was early by 2 hours and we all had a great laugh at everyone's expense!

So my guide and Sanjay collected me from the hotel and took me back through the busy streets of Jaipur to the City Palace and Hawa Mahal (palace of wind, and not the wind Ray thinks of...). BUT next door is a huge astrology/astronomy place. It is noon and my guide, patient nice man that he is, walked through this huge place with amazingly accurate sun dials for over an hour. On his plus side we kept moving from one spot of shade to another. On the bad, he looked fresh as a daisy, I looked like a daisy that had been trampled by a herd of camels. Bastard!

The City Palace was all it was cracked up to be... but then we went to the bazaar. Again, my guide is a saint. Helping me to cross traffic that is coming from the wrong way qualifies him for beatification... We went to a temple to Shiva that was closed, but the Sadu's let us go up on the roof. We spent close to 30 minutes on the roof top watching traffic move through the center of town. It was like watching a river of people and animals perfectly choreographed. I took many pictures but unless you were to see and hear it you wouldn't get the full feeling of it.

Then--- shopping!!!! I got to see bangles, jewelry, stamped cloths and other crafts being made by hand. I have saffron, a camel hair rug, two pashmir shawls, and not so much money left in my accounts. So if anyone from Deaconess is keeping up with me --- I will still need to work when I get back.

Now I hear there is happy hour and so I'm going to see if I can get a mighty fine Gin and Tonic to cap what was a very lovely day in Jaipur India. K:)