Day 236-239: Last Days in Jaipur

I can't believe this trip is really almost over! After Nawras left, reality sank in a bit. I started the good old job search, started organizing my things, packed, and watched a lot of good television shows and movies. We didn't leave the house grounds for 4 days! Pretty amazing, actually.

I decided that since I am not spending Christmas in India that I could bring a little Christmas here. What better way to do it than by feeding the Sinha family a good old fashioned Ewing Christmas dinner! Is there turkey? No, not really. Are there marshmallows? No. Are there fried onions? No, but is that going to stop us! Of course not!

We worked with chicken, no marshmallows for my sweet potato casserole (apparently it is already sweet enough - which I think is false. It can never be too sweet. Oh, and this is a side dish. Every American will swear it is until the day they die), and we actually had to fry real onions (gasp! Blasphemy. Who does such things!). It turned out and the family loved it. What is there not to love? This combo is American at it almost finest. Plus, some people might say it's just a bit healthier with a few of those friend/sweet elements missing. I think it's just not as delicious!

Pallavi's mom made an amazing apple pie to top it off. She asked if I liked apple pie. How silly! It's un-American to not like apple pie. There is practically the design of an American flag in that lattice crust if you look hard enough.

We played games and drank this amazing Spanish egg nog meets Bailey's meets spiced liquor. If time here has to end, what a great way to end our time here.

Day 235: Trip to Jaipur Airport

Nawras unfortunately only could take a few days of holiday to come to India before returning back to Dubai for an important presentation. We tried to convince her in many different ways to stay. This persuasion phase is a common Sinha family move. They are very good and really know how to pull your heartstrings. However, it failed.

At 1:30 a.m., we needed to leave to drop Nawras and her hubby off to the airport. Pallavi hasn't drive to the airport by herself in quite some time and the roads have changed significantly. As a result, she doesn't know the way to the airport. Normally, Pallavi's dad would drive, but we didn't feel right about keeping him up so late when he has to get up at 7:00 a.m. We were on our own.

Needless to say, Pallavi's parents wanted to make sure that we got there in one piece. Her dad, feeling responsible for us, pulled out his GPS and taught me how to use it. He even pre-programmed the route to the airport. Her mom also walked her through the verbal/visual directions. All set, ready to go, we got into the car, turned on the GPS, and set off.

We immediately started to ignore the GPS directions in lieu of the verbal/visual directions. Then, once we got to a point where Pallavi no longer recognized the route, we started following the GPS. Maybe what followed next wouldn't have happened had we not missed one of the turns. Next thing we know, we need to turn around. We can't just take a U-turn. Oh no. That would be too easy. Instead the GPS told us to turn left. Pallavi looked at the left and kept going, saying, "no way the GPS could mean that alley." Then it told us to turn left again. By this point, it was 2:00 a.m. The flight was a 4:00 a.m. Most check-in counters close 90 minutes before the departure time. We don't have time to be choosy. We need to just get to the airport! So, we turned left.

We then proceeded to follow some sequence of dirt alleys all the way through the back end of Jaipur. We joked that we were just giving them a last minute tour of Jaipur, since we hadn't really done any touristy things around the town while they were here. At one point we passed a camel parked outside somebody's home. We were so in the middle of nowhere that we had passed where the poor camel men live. Now, of course, it's 2:10 a.m. by this point, and Pallavi is rushing -  driving an SUV, with some speed, over all of the dips in the dirt road. She tried to be careful, but at one point, Nawras joked that she had just broken on of the bones in her body courtesy of one of those dips.

Finally, we make it to a main road and we see the end in the sight. The GPS has a little finish line flag on it. We pull up, ready to turn into the airport. What do we see? A closed military gate. The GPS had brought us to the opposite side of the airfield!

Quickly, Nawras' hubby puts on the GPS on his phone and we re-programme our GPS. It's 2:15 a.m. and we are 20 minutes away from the entry! We speed towards the airport. We got there at 2:27. Phew! We dropped them off without any problem.

So much for a GPS though!

Day 234: Pushkar & Ajmer

The Sinha family decided to show Nawras and her hubby one of Rajasthan's most iconic tourist towns: Pushkar. Pushkar is the home of the world's only Brahma temple. Hinduism has one god, who comes in many forms, 3 of which are primary forms: Brahma - the creator, Shiva - the destroyer, and Vishnu - the sustainer. Apparently Brahma had to do penance in Pushkar, and needed to make some prayer by a lake at sundown which can only be done alongside his wife. When his wife didn't come on time, the priests found some other local woman and married her to him, and then did the prayer. Then when the wife finally came out, there was hell to pay! She cursed him and told him that he wasn't fit to have a temple to his name. In the end though, she felt bad and told him, alright, you can have one temple here where you did your penance, because the place is so important to you.

Now, most Hindu gods are pretty groovy. One of them is even often depicted smoking hash. It is no great surprise that a place like this one would be a primary stop on the hippie trail. Times may have changed, but the amount of foreign hippies in this place certainly hasn't! This is the kind of town with one lane roads, lined with bulls and cows, Hindu priests all making their rounds, and white Europeans buying bongs.

Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to spend in this town before we went to Ajmer. In the morning, while we all sat down to discuss the plan, Pallavi's dad mentioned that there is a Durga located in Ajmer. This Durga is a holy place for almost every one of India's religions, and is the 2nd most holy place for Indian Muslims to Mecca. It contains the 'grave' of a sufi saint, who apparently sent his disciples away for a few days and stayed in his room, and, when they went to check on him 10 days later, discovered that a bed of flowers had replaced his body. They didn't even know he had died!

This place was absolutely mad! Now, Pallavi's family used to live in Ajmer, where her Dad was the commanding officer of the local military unit. As such, her Dad still has contacts there, so he had arranged a police escort and an Imam to help us break through the throngs of crowds. This was Islam meets India meets other religions. I haven't been so fascinated by India in a few trips. We moved through a heaving throng of people, past huge 400 kgs pots filled with food and money, past the Hindi wedding-style music playing, the men all sitting and sing/praying in the courtyard, the women tying cords to the edge of the grave in hopes their prayers come true, the men carrying offerings of flowers on their head, and pushed our way through the door to stand alongside the 'grave.' The Imam then did a blessing over our heads using a certain kind of cloth that had been placed on top of the grave. Then he tied cords for protection over our heads.

It was Incredible India at its finest! 

Day 230-233: Jaipur

I have roughly 10 days left in my journey and we decided to come back to Jaipur, Pallavi's hometown. Pallavi's friend, Nawras, and she have a pact to see each other once every year. Last year and earlier this year, it proved too difficult to coordinate; however, Nawras found a flight to Jaipur on 1st December for 5-6 days. Hence, we came back to Jaipur when we did.

We arrived mostly relaxed from our Business Class journey, visited with family, and then started the sleep deprived, anti-jet lag process. I do not jet lag. I refuse to start now. However, to not jet lag requires a bit of a painful process. You can't be fully rested and you have to push yourself through your tiredness to adjust your time clock. Whatever the time difference is, you must make sure that you fall asleep on time, on local time, on the very first day. If you do that, you will wake up on local time without any difficult. What's the problem in our scenario? 

It's a 4.5 hour time difference between India and Spain. We didn't sleep on our flight to Jaipur because we wanted to take advantage of our Business Class perks. This delayed bedtime meant we didn't sleep until the equivalent of 7:30 a.m. in Spain. To fall asleep at the appropriate time, we needed to wake ourselves from our sleep prematurely as if we had a nap.Okay, that is all well and good, but what time is Nawras and her hubby arriving? 3:30 a.m.! That meant that even if we sleep at 9:30 p.m. (which we did), we would still wake at 11:30 p.m., as if we just took a long nap! 

It is no surprise that we all stayed up talking until 9 a.m. after Pallavi picked up Nawras et. al from the airport. How in the world we only got 8 hours of sleep within a 48 hour period of time is definitely anti-bad backpackers. We've gotten so use to getting 10 hours of sleep every night that we winge if we only get 7. Good thing we have a few days of 'relaxing' around Jaipur before we start their tourism itinerary. 

Day 117-150: India

Never fear! We didn't disappear. We didn't become 'Bad Bloggers.' En route to the Mediterranean, we decided to take a nice long pit stop in India and relax with Pallavi's family. As such, we didn't do too much traveling, but we did do a lot of visiting with friends and family. There are a few sub adventures during our journey though:

1. Arriving in Delhi

We took off from Bangkok at 5 a.m. to Calcutta, where we had a 10+ hour layover, before completing our trip to Delhi. Did you know that Calcutta is only a 2.5 hour flight away from Bangkok? I never thought it was so close. We were so lucky that Pallavi's uncle, who manages a tea garden near(ish) Calcutta, was able to book us a room in his company's guesthouse and a driver for the day, so we could shower and sleep during our layover. I swear, no tea tastes nearly as good as tea straight from the tea plantation.

The plan was to sleep just a few hours, then meet up with one of Pallavi's best friends for lunch, and then head off to the airport. That was the plan anyway.

No sooner did we arrive, had breakfast, than we passed out. For hours! More than a few hours - well past the time when we could go and get lunch. Plus, when we woke up, we still hadn't heard back from Pallavi's friend. After some back and forth and almost quitting on her friend, Pallavi finally got a hold of her - her original text hadn't gone through! She raced over, we had tea, and then rushed to the airport. Only to have our flight delayed anyway! Go figure.

2. Chandigarh

One of Pallavi's best friends from Google had just had a baby 10 days before our arrival in Delhi. That friend lives in Chandigarh, which is just 6 hours of so away. Pallavi has felt like she's missed out on a lot of her friends' big life moments (marriages, babies, etc.) that she really wanted to see her. Her parents also had dear friends from the Army who live in Chandigarh, so we all loaded up the car and went on the road trip together.

This is my first trip through Punjab. Most of the Indian dishes that Westerners are familiar with come from Punjab. Have you ever actually seen the dab of butter melt into the top of Butter Chicken? So good!

Chandigarh is a planned "new" city. It was created to be the shared capital for the states of Haryana and Punjab when Pakistan & India split. It is a Capital Territory, much like Washington D.C. - it doesn't "belong" to either of these states. As a result, it's completely different from anywhere else I've ever traveled in India. It is clean and... quiet!

The visit with Pallavi's friend was nice and the baby is super cute. Pallavi's family friends also took us out to the local lake, which is a major attraction of this city. Everybody goes there to get some air, so it is a lovely place to just take a walk. Since our arrival in the city, I have seen 0 tourists in this town! However, go figure that when we go to the lake, I see the only other Caucasian in this town - this Midwest haggard, leathered, hippie woman came up to me, and asked me, in a heavy American accent, "are you alright?" I stared at her and replied, "Uhh... yeah. Are you alright?" She was surrounded by two sketchy looking Indian men, and her eyes said either crazy or high. She's said, "yeah, do you speak Indian?" Me: "No, I don't speak Hindi." That was it! She wandered off!

No sooner did she leave, than apparently some local villager started asking questions about me. His major question was what was wrong with my eyes that caused me to wear glasses. He seemed shocked that Westerners could have weak eyes too! Blast! Our weakness is exposed! Now nobody will believe I have x-ray vision.

3. Weight Gain

What else did we do: Gain 6 lbs! No, seriously. When we weighed in upon arrival, we discovered that I had lost 9 lbs! I was the skinniest I'd ever been. Don't worry! It's still the case - the skinniest I ever WAS! No sooner did we land than we started eating the yummiest of food all of the time. Pallavi's mom and sister are both amazing cooks, so there wasn't a single dish I could say no to. To top it off - every meal - was dessert. Every day, on average, for lunch and dinner, some delicious cake or homemade ice cream or custard or mango cheesecake would be presented. Pallavi's mom cooked like a magic elf - somehow every day it was done without our knowledge. It was so delicious that both of us just kept telling ourself, just one more dessert, and then we won't eat another one. I gained 6 lbs in spite of doing yoga every day! Towards the end, I just threw in the towel. I figured, what's done is done. If I'm going to gain weight, at least I'm going to have done it eating the yummiest food I've ever eaten.

Obviously there was a lot of business to do, as is always the case when you visit 'home.' I learned all about how driver's licenses are made; how the passport office functions, how to tie a Rakhi; how to behave properly at a Rajput family gathering; and more.

It was a great month, filled with tons of relaxation, but now we return on the road. Next stop: Egypt!