Jaipur

The weekend away was interesting on many levels, so I'll start from the very beginning and ramble a bit randomly (because in all honesty, the sites in Jaipur were not particularly amazing).

As I waited on the train platform, a very nice 30-something woman came up to me, looking a bit embarrassed. She leaned in and, practically whispering, told me that my shirt was up. I think, "What is she talking about?" as I look down to check that my midriff and chest is well covered by the baggy kurta. Well, apparently, my backpack was causing my kurta to ride up, so instead of reaching my mid-thigh, it (scandalously) sat just above my my hip. I had already learned (the hard way of course) that having the crotch of even the baggiest pants exposed is completely inappropriate, unless you're wearing jeans (drawstrings are also supposed to be tucked in, because these too, imply indecency). I was thankful that she alerted me to my indecency, but what was especially funny about the interaction was that she said she was prompted to come over because "people were staring." It's true, people were, but people stare at me here no matter how I'm dressed, not simply because they are alerted to the existence of my crotch by an exposed pant front.
In terms of the fashion faux pas I committed, it's one of my least favorite rules about dressing in India--I absolutely hate this double standard. It's one thing to think that genitalia should be covered by three layers of fabric. It's another to think that that's true for women, but to think it's acceptable for men to pee (and expose themselves) anywhere and everywhere.

When I got on the train (finally dressed, again, like a decent woman), I ordered dinner. Train food is surprisingly one of those weird things that actually works well and efficiently in India and the result is often something extremely delicious. A guy comes through the train around mealtime and asks if you want food. If you say yes, he takes down your seat number. He then calls in the orders to the next station and when you reach that station, he brings you your meal, as fresh as possible and hot. The food on the train was quite honestly fantastic (it was easily better than any food at a mid priced Indian restaurant in the U.S.). For roughly $1.12, I received a tray with a huge thali. It included: rice, chapati, a paneer curry, a potato dish, and daal, along with some type of funky packaged cake. The "cake" was basically made of shredded wheat, sugar, oil, nuts and spices. It basically tasted like saffron and pistachio flavored cotton candy. Sounds amazing, no? Well it was...and I'm on a mission to find packs of it to bring home.

Jaipur was fine, but not amazing. It was far more expensive than other cities (restaurants and guesthouses often charged twice what most other places have been charging). It also was far dirtier than some of the other cities I've visited. In terms of the sites, a few of the major ones were under construction and Meg (with whom I was traveling) and I decided not to shell out the cash for another Rajasthani palace that didn't seem to be particularly unique. We did however do the walking tour that Lonely Planet maps out, did some shopping, and gazed at most of the sites from the outside.

While in Jaipur, we encountered a few things that we haven't before:

Firsly, while walking down the street on Saturday morning, a seemingly middle class woman who was walking with a nice purse and her husband noticed us and turned around to hold out her hand for money. Basically, it seemed like the assumption was that white people will willingly give money to anyone who asks. This moment was really irritating, but it also brought to the surface Indians seem to perceive Westerners and this moment has caused me to think a lot more about this question. I have no answers really, but on a side note:
Begging is really common all over India and when travelling here you just have to get used to it and devise a survival strategy (most of the people I've met, including myself, make it a rule never to give money, but we will give bottles of water or food to beggars and will donate money to NGOs that help these populations). It can be absolutely heartbreaking, and I feel like I have witnessed a lot of suffering (and even a few "professional" beggars who were mutilated by their parents or so-called beggarmasters so that they could make a living this way).

Another thing that Meg and I encountered for the first time in Jaipur was a whole new species of touts. In most of India, people will say constantly say "hello" to any random white person walking down the street. I often say "hello" back, but unless it's a special situation, I usually end the conversation there by ignoring the rest of the comments (if I didn't, I fear I would never, ever be able to move two feet without a long interaction taking place and I would probably be engaged to be married to about 20 different random men). But in Jaipur, they've figured out that foreigners won't talk to them and they don't accept the "pretend you didn't hear" strategy one bit. Instead, they try to engage you in conversation and, more often than not, a business deal by saying, "Why do you hate Indians?" This accusation works, I'm sure, because it is tempting, when someone says this, to turn around and clarify why you are no longer talking to them. But as you can imagine it gets really, really frustrating. Meg and I actually stopped even saying "hello" in Jaipur and found that this helped, but every once in a while someone still whipped out the clever and scripted phrase to see if we would respond (and then ultimately, end up in their store or in their autorickshaw).

Also in Jaipur, Meg and I took a public bus up to Amber Fort. For my project, I've been trying to get an understand of how childhood is conceived of in India and for this reason, I've been observing parent-child interactions carefully (Without this, how could I really define child marriage in culturally appropriate terms?) On the bus, it was interesting that the minute Meg and I got on, it was not adults who stood up to offer their seats, but many parents pushed their children to stand up. Of course, we refused. But it got me thinking: What does it mean that Indian mothers force their children to stand, when in an NYC subway, people will give up their seats for children and mothers and fathers would always give an empty seat to their child .

In terms of sightseeing, we spent Saturday wandering around the city and the only site that we really visited was Jantar Mantar, an amazing Alice in Wonderland-esque observatory.
The photo above doesn't even begin to capture how cool this place was. Essentially, it was filled with gigantic, old astrological instruments, including what is supposedly the largest sundial in the world and various horoscope-related devices. We got a great guide who showed us how to use each of the instruments and ran around (as if it were a playground) to climb up the various structures and check them out.

On Sunday, we went to Amber Fort, which was absolutely gorgeous, but was otherwise a pretty poor experience. Many of the audiotours at Indian sites are not too bad--some of them are quite good, actually. But the audiotour at Amber Fort was horrible, to the point where we had to stop partway through. Given that there were no signs around, the audioguide was really the only hope of understanding what we were saying, and it was really was so bad that we preferred to just check out the scenery instead. The tour essentially overused personification every chance it could get. So instead of learning something, you had to listen to some horrible actor ramble on about how they are the majestic gate through which the king walked when he wanted to find his wife, or some rubbish like that. What was funny/tragic is that you could kind of tell that whoever made it was probably really excited about their brilliance. Oh well, it was really pretty:

And Jaipur central was oh so ugly (here are some of the pigs eating trash outside of the guesthouse)