Crazy India

I saw a friend of mine for the first time since I got back from India the other day. She is a loud, outspoken, classic Bostonian who thinks I'm a bit crazy for doing what I do, but enjoys hearing about it. She claimed, like most people, that she wanted to hear all about India. But, like most people, she only had about a 30 second attention span before she narrowed it down to what she actually wanted to hear about: a "crazy" India story. She said, "You must have so many crazy India stories! Tell me your best one." I started racking my brain and felt a little bad that I couldn't think of a single one. And then I remembered: Jaisalmer.

Jaisalmer was our last stop on my month long trip to India before we headed back to Delhi where I was catching my flight home. It was at the end of a whirlwind tour of the state of Rajasthan and we were exhausted. I was coming off of a week of being sick with a nasty cold/flu bug, the long duration of which probably had something to do with the many nights we spent on public transport (trains, buses) in an attempt to save money and time. I was all for returning to Delhi a few days early and skipping Jaisalmer altogether, but my travel partner E was keen, so we pushed on. Jaisalmer is less then 100k from the Pakistan border, is basically desert, and is home to the "yellow fort," one of the "World Monuments Watch" top 100 most endangered monuments (the list changes ever year, but the fort has the accolade of having made the list in 1996, 1998, and 2000). Our guide book gives a lengthy spiel on how the fort is sinking into the desert and how tourists who stay within the fort itself contribute to that due to their demand for water, etc, etc, and how for this reason they only list hotels that are outside of the fort walls and encourage people not to stay at hotels within the walls. We were down with this (and almost never strayed from Lonely Planet for lack of other information), so we chose one of the hotels ahead of time, called and made a reservation, and were all set. We finally arrived on our puke streaked bus (see previous post) around 10:30pm.

Looking towards Pakistan from a rooftop

Some of the walls of the Jaisalmer fort at night.

Not a great view from inside the fort looking out

When traveling in developing countries, particularly where there are a lot of tourists, and particularly as a female, you learn a few things very quickly: 1) Never look like you don't know what you're doing or where you're going, 2) When you get off of a bus/train/taxi/rickshaw, always have a next destination (this is really part of #1), 3) Always bargain, even if you have no idea how much something should cost. And bargain hard. When we got off the bus in Jaisalmer, we already had a hotel reservation, so we focused on grabbing our bags from the back of the bus and attempting to ignore the swarm of hotel touts and rickshaw drivers around us until we could assess which driver looked the least sleazy. When I finally told one of them which hotel we wanted to go to he said, "Ok, no problem, 20 rupees." I was a bit taken aback, because I hadn't taken a rickshaw ride my entire time in India that had cost so little, so I wasn't sure how to bargain for something I was pretty sure I was being undercharged for. Still somewhat stunned, we followed the guy over to a rickshaw where there was already someone else in the driver's seat. My head immediately started spinning trying to think of what this scam could possibly be, but the guy confirmed for me that he would take me to the hotel we wanted for 20 rupees total and he jumped in the rickshaw next to the driver.

An auto rickshaw stand in Agra

Once we were on our way the guy turned around and introduced himself as Johnny. We gave him our fake India names and he wanted to know where we were from and how we were liking India, etc. All of the normal stuff. But I still couldn't figure out what was in this for him, since he wasn't even the driver. After the pleasantries were exchanged, however, he asked us how much we were paying for our room. We honestly couldn't remember and gave him a ballpark figure. He then said something along the lines of, "You know, I actually have a hotel." Ding ding ding! I now knew where this was going. We acted very disinterested while he tried to interest us in the brochure, pointing at pictures of really nice looking hotel rooms that we could get for the same price we were about to pay. He kept asking us, but really telling us, that he would take us directly to our hotel, because he's not a liar and wants it to be our choice, and we could look at the room, and then go with him to his hotel, which was very close to our hotel, and look at his room, and then decide. And if we still decide we want the other room, he'd drive us back to the original hotel, all for the original 20 rupees, no problem, it's our choice.

I wanted no part in this and didn't feel any obligation to him whatsoever, but then he dropped us at our hotel. We walked into the lobby and it looked like a bit of a dump. We were used to that, but boy did his pictures look a lot nicer than this place....then the guy working reception told us that our room would be ready in about half an hour. Half an hour?!?! It's 10:30 at night! What are people still doing in our room we reserved yesterday? Sketchy.

So, against our better judgment, we decided that we had nothing to lose by at least going to look at Johnny's hotel while we waited for our original room to be ready. When we went outside I was in the midst of putting our bags back in the rickshaw and very sternly laying out for Johnny what was going to happen next, when a guy from the hotel next door, also listed in Lonely Planet, came over and started trying to get us to go to his hotel. Johnny and the new guy started alternating between arguing with each other and then trying to shout over each other to get our attention and each convince us to go with them to their respective hotels. It got real crazy, real fast, as we couldn't understand either of them over the other and it was starting to get physical between Johnny and the new guy with lots of shoving for our attention. E looked at me at one point and said, "I don't like this," and we started discussing just getting out of the rickshaw altogether. Once Johnny and the new guy could tell we were getting ready to back out they got even more panicky at the idea of losing potential customers and everything escalated. The driver was now somehow involved as well and all of a sudden in the middle of the scuffle we heard a punch land. I still have no idea who threw it or who got hit, but that seemed to do the trick long enough for Johnny and the driver to get back into the rickshaw and for us to speed off.

E and I looked at each other, half laughing and half in disbelief that that had just happened. Johnny regained his suave composure immediately and turned around very casually and said, in his bizarre Australian/English/American accent, "Sorry about that. *chuckle* You know how things get sometimes. So anyway, you're really going to love our rooftop restaurant. My brother is the cook." Or something like that. Apparently getting in fist fights is common enough there that it didn't really phase him. He kept crapping on about how "chilled out" his hotel was and listing the different foreigners they had staying there and how these two Canadian girls were playing guitar on the rooftop and just chilling out.

Although we had been assured twice that Johnny's hotel was very close to ours, we drove for at least 15 minutes in that rickshaw. And at one point we entered the fort. I looked out of the corner of my eye at E, the landscape architect researching waste water management, because I knew she was not going to be impressed. The rickshaw got as close as it could to the hotel and then we had to walk the rest of the way through the narrow streets of the fort, including through a wedding. We finally got to the hotel and Johnny showed us three different rooms. They were all much nicer than any of the places we had been staying and they were all the same price or cheaper. We felt very conflicted about a) having given into this whole thing in the first place and b) being inside the fort. But we were also very hungry and tired after our bus journey and our minor victory over the guys at the bus station earlier in the day and really couldn't fathom the idea of getting back in the rickshaw and making Johnny and the driver take us all the way back to the other hotel. Nevermind that I don't believe for a minute it would have been that simple.

Narrow alleyways inside the fort

 So we picked our room, which was the same price as at the other place and much nicer, and felt guilty about it for the next two nights we stayed there. We ran into some American guys we had chatted with briefly in another town and decided to meet up with them for beers one night. After telling them this story one of them put it pretty perfectly when he said, "So you guys are eco-terrorists?" I think that's how we felt, especially E.

The hotel ended up being a fine choice (minus the eco-terrorism), but I think we left Johnny and his brother disappointed. We ate at their restaurant the very first night, and the food was fine, but nothing to write home about. E ate a local dish that was apparently tree bark. Literally. But Johnny and his brother hovered over us the whole meal and clearly would have been happy to "chill out" with us all night. We never ate another meal there again (this was more circumstantial than a conscious effort not to) and you could tell their feelings were hurt. They actually asked us multiple times if everything was alright, if the food was ok, if there was something they could change, etc. It was a bit much and I don't think they understood the idea of just wanting to try different places. I've never stayed at a hotel before where I felt bad about not hanging out with the people who ran it more. It was awkward, to say the least.

So that's about as crazy as it got in Jaisalmer. But, if that's as crazy as it got in a month in India, I consider myself pretty lucky. Here's to hoping I don't have better stories next time!

Julia : 1, India : 1

I don't know that this story will translate or be of any interest to anyone else, but I was pretty proud that my bargaining skills that I was worried might be a bit rusty held up during this trip. In the Peace Corps I went from fearing and avoiding bargaining with all of my being to really enjoying it. I learned that it should be an enjoyable experience for both parties and that if someone walks away unhappy, they have only themselves to blame. One American guy we met while traveling summed up exactly the wrong way to look at bargaining very well: "Well, by definition someone is the loser, right?" Wrong, my friend! Very rarely, however, bargaining can turn nasty and does become a bit of a face off. It's usually because you're bargaining for something you can't really walk away from; in this case, a bus ride.

We were in Jodhpur and wanted to go to Jaisalmer, so we went to the private bus stand to try and catch a bus. We were treating ourselves to a private bus because we were told it would take about half the time of a government run bus, and the government run buses are really cold at night (as you may remember from previous posts they have no heat and usually have panes of glass missing, and the temperature outside hovers around freezing at night), which we figured would not help my cold at all.

Inside of a government run bus

We showed up to the bus stand and were the only two white people. Fine. I'm used to that. Our hotel told us that the bus should cost 170 rupees, so we were a bit surprised when the gaggle of young men "working" at the bus station told us it would be 200 rupees. We said that we thought it was 170 rupees and they said nope, 200. We were brought to the ticket counter by these young men, who spoke in Hindi to the guy working the counter, and were then told by the ticket guy that the tickets were 200 rupees. Often the prices are printed somewhere, so I asked to see a list of the prices and all of a sudden no one spoke English well enough to understand me. E and I stepped aside to decide what to do next. We decided to ask an Indian guy who was sitting on the bus we wanted to go on how much he had paid for his ticket. When the gaggle of young men saw us doing this, they quickly shouted to him in Hindi and the guy on the bus slowly and unconvincingly replied to us, "200 rupees....?" I believe E actually threw her hands up in the air at the guy on the bus and said in frustration, "Come on, man!"

Well, it was quite clear at this point that we were being lied to about the price. And while this wouldn't bother some foreigners and they would say that it's silly to argue over a dollar, we are not those types of foreigners. The Peace Corps Volunteer in me will never die, I think, and E's budget made me look like a highfalutin millionaire who spent my money on silly things like food and accommodation. My blood was starting to boil, as I do not appreciate being blatantly ripped off. As we were standing there trying to figure out what to do, the guy on the bus quietly called us back over because he clearly felt bad. He told us the price was 140 rupees. 140?!?! Those bastards! If they had just accepted our 170 they still would have made money off of us and we would have been none the wiser! But instead they were so greedy that they wanted a full 60 extra rupees (about $1.50) from each of us rather than 30. Now I was really pissed, but also feeling really good about our new bargaining position. An informed one, that is.

So we went back up to the ticket guy and I gave him my meanest look and told him we would pay 140 each. He waggled his head no, but wouldn't look me in the eye as he said, "170." Oh, now you want my 170 rupees??? Well it's too late! I refused and said meanly while giving him my death look (E said it even scared her), "No, 140." He continued to waggle his head no and went on to ignore us. I was at a loss and realized I had no experience in a situation like this. I'm plenty used to people trying to rip me off, but once they realize that I know the real price they usually drop the act in order to make the sale. I had no idea what to do in a situation where someone was just refusing to sell us something at the real price. I was seeing red and could barely think straight I was so angry. I decided that we would just hand him the 140 rupees each as an ultimatum and he could take it or leave it.

Well, either he can't do math or he caved, because he took the money (after saying that one of our 100 rupee bills was unacceptable because it had a small rip in it) and wrote us up our ticket. Once we had our tickets I went off on him and the whole group of men. Not the smartest idea, and not culturally sensitive, but like I said, I couldn't think straight. I think I told them that they were all bad people and that karma is a you-know-what. Keepin' it classy in India. But boy was I fired up about our triumph over the man. Or men, in this case. Julia: 1, India: 0.

The bus ride was four or five hours long. We learned that just because we had upgraded to a private bus didn't change the fact that Indians are pukers. Within the first hour of the ride the woman in front of us was leaning out the window puking. Thank god our windows were closed. But now we also had to close the curtains. It was either that or look at the puke streaked windows for the rest of the journey. We looked across the bus in hopes of at least getting a view out of that side, only to see that a puker had already left their mark on that side, too. Gross. There wasn't a single bus I was on the whole time in India where someone didn't puke. Someone get this country some Dramamine!

Julia : 1, India : 1

Stay tuned for my next post about our adventures in Jaisalmer.