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Early start got us on the road to Jaipur. Mr Sharma (and yes we did get a photo of him, for those who asked!) took us through a local area on the way out - wow that opens your eyes (and the smell makes them bleed!). The poverty is bad and there are just people sleeping on the streets and the kids are in rubbish piles looking for bits of food etc, and they are just filthy. There are animals everywhere, just wandering in the street - cows, street dogs, camels etc etc, just chewing on anything! As we went a bit more into the countryside, it wasn't much different, just on a smaller scale. And as we drove for a while we had the lovely pleasure of seeing men 'squat' at the side of the road, and dotting over bare fields, releaving themselves!!! What a site. So we then understood why it is insulting to use your left hand for anything here - cause the left hand is used for something else, if you get my drift!
We stopped at a place called Fatehpur Sikri, which is an abandoned city/fort. It's pretty cool and I liked it, probably a bit more than the Taj. It was so quiet and away from all the busy hectic stuff of the cities. We finally got into Jaipur and Sharma found our guesthouse. We invited him in for a drink before he drove all the way back to Delhi - about another 9 hours, crazy job! Our room was very very basic. It was an empty room apart from 2 beds pushed together, which had paper thin matresses on them (ontop of a slab of wood!) and there were cobwebs everywhere. But the bathroom was worse! It was thick with grime and the shower sprayed onto the wall, so to get washed you had to turn the low level taps on and sort of throw the water over yourself. We weren't happy to say the least. Not exactly the honeymoon accommodation we had in mind - but it was cheap! (about 2 pound fifty each a night!). We decided that low level budget backpacking may be a bit of a struggle when all we want to do is rest after a hectic few weeks, so we decided to phone around a few other places. But everywhere was booked up! We could get a hotel in another town, but that meant travelling out to come back for our flight, so we decided to rough it and make the most of it. All over the walls in the guesthouse were leaving comments from people who'd stayed there - all saying fantastic things, we found it hard to believe, but to be honest we ended up really liking the place and as they thankfully had availability for the week we stayed for 5 nights - either that or sleep on the streets. The people who ran it were great and Mrs Singh's cooking was good! They lived there with their family so the kids were around too and they'd loads of birds and dogs. It was peaceful and nice to sit outside and have a beer at the end of a hectic day. The only thing was the constant chitter chatter from the pigeons at the front door every morning - very close to having pigeon pie!
After a busy day, sorting out accommodation and fighting off the street traders and taxi men, we escaped to Om Tower for a meal. It's a posh hotel recommended my Mr Sharma, and has a revolving restaurant. It was nice to be up and out of the busy dirty city (and to clear our noses and throats of the constant black dirt you breath in!). The food was good and reasonably cheap , which was surprising. Afterwards, we went down a few levels and sat in the bar and sorted out what we were going to do for the next week, as we were beginning to realize, it's a lot harder than we thought to organise anything here!
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