JAIPUR – The Pink City

Jaipur had always been exciting from the very first moment we set foot over there. Never mind the hassle of finding a hotel among hotels in the first couple of hours or so, Jaipur really surprised me with a lot of things that I had never expected of seeing and experiencing.

Just across the room from our hotel is a barber shop. Wait a minute. Calling it a barber shop doesn’t even feel right. If there is such thing as barber stall, it should be it. Little might it be, but it brings a broader definition to a HAIRCUT. LOL.

A little bit of walk from there is a wet market and you guys know how I love wet markets. I keep telling people that the best way of ‘reading’ the life of a city is by coming to its markets and that is exactly what we did.

It had quite a variety of fruits and vegetables there although most of them were quite familiar to somebody who was born and raised in a tropical country like me.

If size DOES matter, then I would say this is too tiny for a green bean.

And these are too big for pumpkins. At least they reminded me that I was not really THAT big-headed after all. LOLz.

Of course looking at those vegetables had woken up the puppies in our stomachs so we set out to look for food next. The good news is, Jaipur is anything but short of street food.

The bad news is – the puppies in my belly were not quite ready for any of them YET.

So, we ended up hopping onto an auto rickshaw and asked to be sent to errrr….

McDonald’s. * facepalm

I should have told you by now that occurrences of a black-out are pretty much common in India – or at least in all the three cities that I went to when I was there. Just when the sight of a big M put a big smile on our faces, there came the news that serving was temporarily a no-go because electricity was down. For a moment, I just stood there watching the flashing image of a towering Big Mac shattered off my head. Uhuk! Uhuk!

But then, I was not sure if I could have enjoyed flicking at least 200 rupees off my fingers over a single serving of meal when there were these errrr, (underprivileged?) people staring at me right within sight. Who knows when was the last time they had a proper meal?

So – we wandered off around the area hoping to see another place from where we could get at least something my inner puppies could tolerate. This part of the city seemed quite ‘upscale’ with some smell of luxury in its town settings, buildings and shops.

Looking so outstanding with its Arabic architecture and beautiful creamy white paint, you can’t ignore the prominence of the Jewels Emporium building BUT even more prominent at least in my groaning stomach point of view was that little shop lot in red paint on its very side. LOLz.

So – It turned out to be the Indian Schools of Lickonomics. Awwwww!

The ‘students’ were so nice and friendly despite their hearing impairment. It just shows how people with disability could manage such a busy restaurant like KFC so putting them off a job candidacy is certainly a sheer act of discrimination.

And believe me, you can’t get any happier than having a dish of KFC right in front of you after a long long day in India. 😀

We returned to the streets with renewed energy and excitement. It was late in the afternoon when the people of Jaipur were busy heading back to their homes from work.

Of course for some of them, it was time for a little bit of chai and probably a gossiping session. LOLz.

When I went to Vietnam, I really thought I was going to be deafened by the continuous sounds of honking in Hanoi and Saigon. I returned to KL after a week-long holiday in Bali and realized how silent the streets of KL are.

The streets of Jaipur are just as alive and bustling with all kinds of sounds and noises.  It was one of those moments when I just wanted to stand there on the side of the road and watch the world go by around me. Of course we could not stay around for too long or we’d miss most of the actions. Every part of the city certainly has its own interesting things to see.

Jaipur really is such an animal-friendly city. It felt weird to be traversing along a street and trying to ignore the stare of a goat at the same time.

Believe me; they’d really really look at you STRAIGHT in the eye as if you had once impregnated one of them and now they demand for your responsibility. If they were pretty girls, I would have peed in my pants. LOLZ.

Here and there you’d bump into a group of pigs making their way graciously across the road.

And if you think how big a toilet can be, imagine the size of a toilet complex.

But I doubt if the people of Jaipur really need that when they have this much more convenient pee-on WALL all over the city. It really was a quick step up-zip down-shoot-zip up-step down business. LOLz.

So, after such a long walk with lots and lots of interesting things to see along the way, we finally managed to make it back to the hotel but of course it was too early to retreat back to the comfort of the hotel room.

It wouldn’t take long for you to know why Jaipur is called The Pink City once you get there. Due to several battles in the past, a big chunk of Jaipur city had been walled up with huge fortification walls along with seven entrance gates to offer access to the public. Bombay Hotel is located very much near to one of them.

It is within this walled city of Jaipur where most of the actions are.

If you asked me where to do shopping in Jaipur, I’m afraid I couldn’t offer any answer to that. Seriously, the whole walled city of Jaipur seems to be full of shops selling just about everything from the most common of things to the most peculiar ones.

The whole stretch of the main road is already too long to cover on foot and yet it branches out to smaller streets and they are all full of shops and stalls!

Seriously, there’s no way you can ever see the end of it, if there’s even any.

India of course is most famous for its massive collection of textiles and clothes but of course Quantity and Quality can NEVER come together.

I bought this in Jaipur for 110 rupees after a long negotiation and look what happened to it after I came down from a Bukit Tabur a few weeks ago. @#$%&%$#K!

And despite the existence of so many OTHER stuffs on the streets, it’s funny how we tend to get attracted to the most unlikely kind of things. One of the things that caught my attention when I first arrived in India is the padlock they use to lock the door to the hotel room.

It has one of those antique and old-timer looks that made me realize how something like padlock had evolved a lot over time, probably since it was first created. I knew I had to buy one to be brought back to Malaysia.

Since I was still very much in the beginning of my journey in Jaipur and India as a whole, I had to brace against the idea of buying more things than necessary. It was always the plan to save my shopping time for New Delhi, although it was impossible to say no to certain things.

But then, being in any of the bazaars is not all about buying things. The things you can buy might be limited by the space in your backpack and probably the amount of money in your wallet but you might return to you country remembering things that you have seen there more than the things that you have bought.

It had been a bad-hair day for me in India may be because I didn’t have a single shit of hair gel on my scalp. Having heard so much about the tight security at the airport of Delhi, I decided to come clean with no liquid stuff in my bag knowing that I can always buy them when I get to India.

While India is probably full of huge tombs and over-sized mausoleum, some of it things DO actually come in small packages. I was all over the place looking for the right size of hair and facial gel that could get me going at least until I leave India but these were the biggest they could offer to me.

Jeez. If they were candies, I could have gulped them all down my throat in one go. We returned to the hotel to have dinner at its café. The Italian couple whose recommendation had prompted us  to stay there was already  THERE waiting for us.

It was the beginning of a new friendship – and an unforgettable adventure.