I'd forgotten how comfortable a real mattress can be. The cat is not snubbing me for abandoning her ... yet. She may change her mind in the days to come.
Now it is time for sleep.
Rough calculations have shown that, relatively speaking, we began the trip home around 7 p.m. on Monday. That puts us currently around the 48 hour mark for travel time. We're still in Seattle, trying to get on a plane to Fairbanks.
Did you just get all Indian?
-Me
It took a while to come around.
-Beau, who had just dropped
litter on the train car floor
Baby! Don't get like this right
before you come back to my house!
-Me
We made it through a 7-hour train ride, a flight that involved going through exactly 5 security checks (sadly, I'm not joking), and even made it through customs. We managed to do this entire trip without paying for a single checked bag. All was going well.
I am sitting in a bar at Sea-Tac, nursing a dirty martini and shooting dirty looks at what was supposed to be our gate. Our flight to Anchorage has been delayed by many hours due to a broken plane. This will cause us to miss our connecting flight to Fairbanks. I'm uncertain as to when Beau, his new sitar and I will be able to arrive at home.
At least there's free WiFi.
Debating fabrics. They were pretty, but not Rs 60 per meter pretty.
Upon arrival, I attempted to fend off rickshaw-wallahs and call the hotel for free pickup, but their driver was not around. So we took a pre-paid and got to the hotel, only to find out that the previous guests had decided to extend their stay. The owner had already booked us into a deluxe room across the street, which he paid for. We did manage to get settled into our hotel on Saturday morning, then headed off to the bazaars.
Jaipur is known as a city for shopping, and it's certainly true that there's lots of goods to be bought. But the goods I want are apparently a bit more elusive. Forget all these crisp, clean stores with their shiny new earring in clean sterling silver settings. I want grimy old jewelry made of questionable metal content. Forget the "Indian costume" stores with their sequins instead of embroidered mirrors and their stiff saris. I want a soft, silky sari with a beautifully decorated pallu.
We went along Bapu and Johari Bazaars, then dove into the tangle of back alleyways, collecting business cards and making notes as we went. I found one ring that haunts me, but I do not recall which shop. If I find it again, it will be a sign from Ganesha to buy it, no matter the price.
Tomorrow is our last full day here. I need to go find the Sikh fabric wholesaler I have negotiated prices with and pick up material for dance costumes. He only sells in 20-meter lengths. We need to see one last palace. Eat one last Indian dinner.
I am falling into the rhythms of Pushkar. We eat late, sleep late, wake up in time for class. Beau goes to study sitar while I meet up with Raki at Colleena's dance school. The Shakti School of Dance is located in the Old Rangi temple. Up on the second floor, I study Khalbelia gypsy dance every afternoon.
In a strange twist, three of my dance friends from Alaska are also here in Pushkar. They are doing intensive Odissi, which my knee would not tolerate. But they join me in gypsy dance class, and afterward we wander the alleys in search of a quiet spot for chai and lassi.
Beau has rented a moped while we are here. It is pink, much to his chagrin. I sing "Barbie Girl" in his ear as we scoot down the road as fast as it will allow. We are leaving soon for Jaipur. I have one more dance class, one more day to wander the markets in this holy town before returning to the chaos that is a large Indian city.
I've tried to put off most of my shopping, but am still toting around a cotton bandhani sari, a set of full gypsy bangles for both arms, various items and gifts for the troupe, and an ancient display costume I talked out of a shopkeeper for Rs300. It will need a bit of work to be wearable. I still need to find a tailor in Jaipur to get a Rajasthani outfit made.
Beau and I have developed a real knack for picking buses that dump us on the side of the road, many kilometers from where we need to be. We ended up in Ajmer, 10 km from the bus stand where we needed to be. One Rs 9 bus ticket each, and we were in Pushkar. We arrived a day early, so our room wasn't ready yet and we had to stay in a nicer one. It was easily the best shower of the trip so far: great water pressure and plenty of hot water.
Naturally my stomach is starting to feel a bit disturbed again, but I hope it will go away quickly this time. Beau has gone to look for a motorcycle or moped to hire, and I am getting ready to head to Shakti School of Dance for my first Khalbelia class. There are also daily Odissi stepping classes, but I don't know if my knees could take the rigor of that.
Beau and I are enjoying a rooftop breakfast of toast with jam and chai. We've checked out of our room in Jodhpur and will be heading for the bus soon, on our way to Pushkar via Ajmer.
We wandered the bazaar last night in search of a bit of shopping. Although the silk bandhani saris were gorgeous, I held myself back and just got a cotton one. How many saris does a white girl living in Alaska need? (At least four, but that's not the point.)
I also found a nice fixed price jewelry store. It was good to just shop without having to haggle. Since the shopkeepers didn't see dollar signs due to the fixed price scheme, I could browse in peace.
Beau just referred to some of the India street cats as looking like Snake Plissken. This is why I love him.
As Beau just linked to my blog from his Facebook page, I thought I'd better write a quick post. This way his friends and family won't start off by reading about diarrhea and vomit.
We spent today touring the Mehangarh, and then spent a few hours flying over the fort on ziplines. A little overpriced, perhaps, but totally worth it. We are not enthralled with this city, especially after a rickshaw driver wanted an outrageous Rs 130 to take us back to our hotel from the fort. We have booked bus tickets for tomorrow to Ajmer, which is the town next to Pushkar. We plan to spend 5 days there studying dance (me), playing sitar (Beau) and trying to rent a motorcycle (both of us).
And now that a happy picture and post is done, feel free to read all about my digestive system.
Ah, Udaipur. How I miss you, with your pretty rooftop restaurant and Thumbs Up and quiet streets.
**GRAPHIC DETAILS AHEAD**
Ah Delhi belly. We did not make it out of Mount Abu as planned, but spent another night there instead. It wasn't Beau this time - it was me. I started feeling unwell after a mildly strenuous sunset hike on Thursday. It went downhill rapidly.
Any doubts I might have had about marrying Beau vanished overnight. Specifically, around the time we realized that I was very sick and there was no electricity in our room. Beau was using the iPod and cellphone to try to illuminate the room and figure out what the problem was with the switches. As I recall, around this time I came crawling out of the bathroom, went through his legs and headed on my hands and knees for the trashcan under the sink.
For the record, I have not thrown up since moving to Alaska at the beginning of 2003. I have had food poisoning in that time. I do not throw up. Usually. Beau found me a bucket and used the cellphone light to check the level as my illness progressed. With all food throughly vacated from my digestive tract, I spent the next 18 hours in bed. Not necessarily sleeping. Beau went to the store for fresh lemon juice, salted biscuits and paracetamol, and also rearranged our bus tickets and extended our hotel stay.
To add to the fun, I capped off 24 hours of no sleep and sickness with an 11:30 p.m. cellphone job interview. I can only hope I managed to come off somewhat coherent and professional.
We made our bus on Friday and reached Jodhpur. I'm already less than enthralled with this very noisy and polluted city. On the bright side, we waked through the main bazaar to get to dinner yesterday, and I kept saying, "Ooh! Pretty! Pretty!" I must resist the urge to buy lots of shiny things here. (Unlike Beau, who bought an electric sitar on New Year's Day.)
Today we are going to the Mehrangarh Fort for some exploring, then are going to do a 2-hour zipline tour from the top of the fort all the way back into town. I suspect it will be less terror-inducing than the bungee jumping in New Zealand was
We caught a bus to Mount Abu. Beau apparently also caught some illness, as he was quite under the weather when we arrived. He didn't eat for about 24 hours and mostly slept and sweated. I kept giving him Alka-Seltzer and making him drink water. We suspect it was a bit of dengue fever.
He awoke feeling much better today, so we will continue on with our plans. We visited the Dilwara temples today and went on a sunset hike. It was a steep 30-minute scramble up the rocks. That only hurt my knee a little, but then we had to come back down. I'm still on the hunt for ice for my poor knee.
Tomorrow we catch a morning bus to Jodhpur.
We finally got out of Agra. It took 4 days, some fake vomit and a 21-hour bus ride, but we did it. We got through the Gujjar blockade and rolled into Udaipur at around 5:30 last night. Arriving on New Year's Eve was interesting. We just wanted to sleep, but all the hotels on the lake were having parties and blasting music. Exhaustion helps greatly, though.
We settled into our room, I asked Beau to marry me, we ate dinner and went to sleep.
Today we went shopping and Beau destroyed all sense of frugality by buying a sitar. I bargained Rs 6000 off the price by telling the shopkeeper that we were his first customers of the year. "First customers, first sale! Very good karma all year long!" It's got a plug for an amp, so I persist in calling it an electric sitar. We also got a fiberglass case and a bunch of accessories thrown in. Beau goes back tomorrow for an hour-long lesson in tuning, maintenance and the basics of playing.
I can't figure out why India is destroying my pants. I have three pairs in various states of disrepair. I can't blame the laundry-wallahs, because they've only washed one of the pairs. Tomorrow's mission is to find a pair of Indian pants that will fit over my brace.
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