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!