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Whilst Chris is reading his book outside in our hotel garden I thought i would quickly jump online to update the blog whilst we are waiting for yet another train. We are in jaipur at the moment and have been here for a couple of days.
Jaipur, for me, is a lot different to how I imagined it. I had quite a romantic idea of the city- it is called the pink city after all. So, in my mind the city is beautiful, idillic location, as stunnign as the Taj Mahal.
In reality it is dirty, smelly, there are huge goats everywhere (not quite sure why they are a lot bigger here than anywhere else we have seen) a bizarre thing in india is that they put goats in human jackets. When we first arrived in inida I saw a goat wearing a bikers jacket, very strange and utterly hilarious! In jaipur, there are also SO MANY child beggars pulling at your bag going "ezcuuuse me miiiiiss, candy candy". The traffic is ridiculous, this is probably emphasised by the fact we have been walking around the city a lot more than the other towns and getting involved with the traffic a lot more. When I saw getting involved, I mean walking on the road amongst the traffic because another fact about Jaipur which I have discovered is that there is a severe lack of pavements, brilliant.
Having said all this about Jaipur our hotel is really lovely and has a lot of charm to it, it is an old house converted into a hotel. There is a perfect garden for sitting down and drinking chai (a sweet milky tea with spices) and our room is perfectly clean and alrge, with a nice comfy bed. We visited the palace yesterday, which was very pretty. There were a lot of Japanese tourists here, who have a habit of pushing in front of you when you are in front of a cabinet loking at the textiles etc, which needless to say was a little irritating - so we ended up trying to hurry through the audio guides we had so we would jump ahead, but the Japanese are fast at looking around, so in the end we slowled down so they would go far ahead in the tour. After the palace we got into a taxi (normally would be an auto rickshaw but there was a strike on yesterday) and whizzed upto the fort which again was very interesting. After this we actually had the day free! We went into a typical Inidan sweet shop and ate lots of yummy puddings, strolled back to town and have been reseraching about Goa and the rest of our trip!
Today we went to the cinema which was really fun. Dad- you would hate it. People were answering their phones, burping etc. But once you were in a zone, the film was really good (mostly all in hindi, but we got the jist of what they were saying). it was three hours long so there was an interval in between! The cinema was huge as well- with art deco in the hall way. There was also only one massive screen- if it was busy i expect it would have been very noisy. As it was it was probably only a quarter full, but even then people were clapping along to the film and laughing all around us- was great fun to go!
I forgot to mention before about our trip to the cafe in Agra. It was a great cafe on a roof top, with trees surrounding it. The road was really busy, but up there it was fairly peaceful. Happily sitting on a table when I spot the lovely alsation, I mention to Baroo how much I love dogs, particuarly alsations. At this point I notice the dog staring at something behind me on the wall. I turn around to discover two monkeys staring down at me. I hate monkeys. So at this point we are all slightly nervous that the moneky is gonna nick our food. Suddenly, the very sweet alsation is barking his life away, right next to me at these two monkeys, his bark was SO loud. I am so scared of this dog at this point I squel a bit, to which everyone turns round to find out why on earth this dog is barking away, to find a westerner cowering at the table! Whilst this is all happening the waiter comes along with something to aim and throw at the monkey. Turns out this dog is a watch dog, for bloody monkeys in the restaurant! In the end we moved because the monkey kept sitting behind us on the wall and the lovely dog followed us to protect us. It is slightly bizarre that one of the problems whilst eating here is monkeys...
I have many other funny stories, however, chai is calling me to the garden to relax with a cup! :) Off to Delhi in a few hours where we finish our first tour.
love you all lots,
Tally and Chris xxxxxx
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