Agra to (near) Jaipur

Last night there was an engagement party at the hotel. Best wishes to the happy couple to be. Since they were bumping tunes (and moving furniture) late into the night, I dipped into my supply of earplugs for the sake of my sanity. I woke up a few minutes before I had to be at the van, having slept through my alarm. Luckily for me, I have more than a little experience with packing my bag and it all came together quite quickly. By some miracle I wasn’t the last one downstairs. Skipping the hotel’s breakfast wasn’t a big deal either, their chai tastes like water.

Yogi, the driver, took us to another Mughal palace. Here I was able to secure a small satchel of “India’s Masala Spice” Lays. You can get them in the US if you know where to look but they’re fresher here. I think I’m getting “elaborately carved red stone fatigue.” There’s nothing I can say about this place that would be new. There’s got to be something about the stone that keeps these carvings in such good shape. An Italian structure of similar age would be caving in on itself with featureless faces on its statue work. Mughal work is still crisp. On the way out we spot a monkey with a cell phone. I can’t imagine he’s up with his payments.

Taken from his human sized Parcheesi board

Our second stop of the day was a step well. A few hundred years ago the emperor got hot. Naturally the solution was to construct a private well with sitting chambers for him to relax in during the summer months. The well is almost a hundred feet deep and back in the day would have had more aquatic dancing girls than an Adolf Zukor movie.

This site is properly in the country. We’re stopping on the motorway for crossing cows. Our van full of pale faces gets plenty of curious stares and waves from the street. Goods are hauled around in homemade trucks where old junk frames meet older industrial engines. Even in this village everyone speaks English, more than just enough to ask me for money. While I was walking out of the site a group of teens start filming me and ask me questions about my time in India. The answer I gave was sunnier than a North Korean weather report. Everything good all the time always. Good lads. India has roughly a zillion regional languages so learning English to bridge those gaps is only natural. It serves the same purpose here as Russian does in Central Asia.

Junk wagon

Our final stop of the day was a glampsite just outside of Jaipur. Some kilometers down  a bumpy dirt road, a gate opens for us and we’re welcomed in to the calmest place I’ve seen in the country. In such a crowded place with so little space to spread out wings, exiting our van and seeing a swimming pool makes me feel as though I’m on another planet. We sit in the shade and are served lemonade with a view of a garden. Our host comes to greet us and check us all in. His plush, velvety accent sounds like old money. 

Family memorials in the back

After I settle in to my tent (with a flush toilet!) I take up a seat near where my guide and the proprietor are chatting and begin to have my questions answered. What is this place? For hundreds of years, his family were the feudal custodians of the land. In the post-independence world, they are property developers. This small lodging takes in only one group at a time and seems to be more of a hobby than a business, our host takes great pleasure in having us around. The dinner was the best I’ve had yet. Farm to table with fresh veggies and chutney so spicy I’m having trouble with it. That’s a very good thing. When the plates are cleared I order a glass of Old Monk rum and we all settle in by the fire. As people in our group drift off into the arms of Morpheus the conversation gets more political. Our host has strong views but presents them so elegantly as to make even the most far out opinions seem reasonable. This was most apparent when he started to speak about the caste system. If I took this man at face value, I’d have thought Hindus and Muslims are eternally at peace and the caste system is both good and flexible. Apparently India has always been kind to the Jews, a statement like that is a failed litmus test. I imagine we have lots to talk about in the privacy of the van tomorrow.