06/04/2012

We had a rather horrible night - and especially Claire as she was sick as a small hospital. She had been sick since 1:00 this morning and I woke up at 4:00 and stayed up with her and helped as best as I could as she continued to be sick, retching up bile - no food came up at all.
At 6:00 I texted "Charles" and told him that she was sick and we wouldn't be able to make the trip - I offered to pay anyway and we agreed to meet back at the Lake Palace Hotel later in the day.
At 9:00 she was still worse for wear with no ended to the retching so I brought her to the local doctor, which we had previously (luckily) spotted for no apparent reason the other day. The doctor reckoned that she had suffered some kind of food poisoning - but we both think it was a long time coming given her constipation and other issues over the last week or so - perhaps last night's Punjab Restaurant food finally tipped her over the edge, despite the fact that I had tasted everything of last night's meal and didn't feel any major issues.
The doctor(s), an old woman and her husband, ended up giving Claire an anti-sickness (and ) shot and prescribed various anti-sickness tablets and a Dioralyte-like substance. In the meantime I went to the Lake Palace Hotel and sorted out things with "Charles" who wasn't there - but they called him and I spoke to him over the phone and ended up leaving Rs.500,- with them for cancellation.
The rest of the day we both spent mostly sleeping - even I didn't go eating other than a few Marie-Gold biscuits that we had previously bought. I did pop out for a while to buy some during the afternoon. I also woke Claire up a couple of times to get her to drink fluids - and I finally took her for a second doctor appointment at 18:00 - just for a follow up and some more pills.
Then we returned to the hotel. I decided to go down and eat in the restaurant at 19:00 as Claire wasn't keen on food smells at all. It turns out that the hotel restaurant, which we thought was vegetarian given the menus in the room, in fact had a small non-vegetarian menu, which was great! They also offered to source beer so I had a Kingfisher with my meal. The meal, which consisted of yet another Chilli chicken, rice and a garlic naan, was really nice - one of the best meals I have had here in India - I am now kicking myself for not figuring this out before we went down to the Punjab Restaurant, which may have been the cause of Claire's sickness - D'Oh!
Afterwards I returned to the room and did some computer stuff while Claire was still sound asleep. At around 0:00 I finally went to sleep, after having woken Claire up a last time to drink some fluids.

05/04/2012

This morning we had a bit of a lie in as Claire was still not feeling terribly well. But after 9:00 we finally got up, showered and headed down to one of the local food wallahs and had some breakfast.
Afterwards we had a walk around the lake and also went to Hotel Lake Palace where we had read that Mahandra Dan ("Charles"), a local tourist guide, takes people off on walks around Mount Abu. We met him there and after talking to him for a bit we booked a half-day trip in the area for the morning from 6:30.
Then we returned to the lake where we hired a leg-propelled boat resembling a swan - yup, corny, but hey we're tourists, we're allowed ;-) We had a spin around the lake for about 30 minutes - it was nice and quiet in the far end and we hovered there for about 10 minutes before returning. It was a good workout too as we were well sweaty afterwards.
After a bit of lunch and trotting around we headed back to the hotel room where we relaxed for a couple of hours. Getting hungry, we headed down to the Punjab Restaurant, which was the only non-vegetarian restaurant we could find in the area that was actually open at 18:30 - as I was craving meat after days of vegetarian food. There we had some Manchow soup, a chilli chicken, rice and pakoras, which wasn't awe inspiring but tasted OK.
Finally we returned to the hotel again and Claire watched some telly while I was doing some computer stuff up until bed time at around 23:00.

04/04/2012

... And the noise just kept going... There was a short break between 4:30 and 5:30 where it was relatively quiet and we both actually managed to fall asleep for a bit before the party started again in a room very near us. We were well pissed off but knew there would be no point in complaining to them as they were pissed out of their minds - and from previous experiences we knew that the hotel staff wouldn't bother addressing it given the volume of people.
So at 9:30, after having showered, I marched down to reception on my own and gave them hell. The reception guy was initially rude but that just sparked me off even more and I ended up giving them the ultimatum of refund/checkout versus new room and a promise of no more partying. In the end they caved in and we got another room on the 3rd floor - not much better really, but Claire and I decided to give the place one more chance.
We even went as far as to check out TripAdvisor for other places but many of them had "very noisy" given the amount of pre-wedding and wedding parties that they throw in Mount Abu, apparently - we knew that was the case before coming but not the extent of what's going on, which became very apparent last night.
So we decided that if we can't hack here for another night then we'll book a car and get off the mountain, down to Jodhpur a couple of days early. Hopefully we won't need to use that option, but staying in Mount Abu for the sake of staying with sleepless nights would just ruin the trip.
Anyways, after moving room and getting in place again, we went down to a local outdoor food place and had some breakfast - Claire's stomach was sick so she settled for toast/butter/jam and I had what looked like a Chapatti with potato filling and sprinkled with cheese - very yummy!
Afterwards we went for a walk around Mount Abu and found the lake too. But we were a bit tired and therefore only spent a couple of hours out before returning to the hotel for a bit and relaxing.
At 16:00 we went back out and had some early supper, consisting of vegetarian pizza, burger and chips - this place appears to offer mostly vegetarian meals and we haven't yet spotted a meat-wallah - gaaaaaaah!
After buying some snacks we returned to the room and devoured them while watching the last 4 episodes of Dexter Season 6 - bye bye for a while, Dexter...! Afterwards we relaxed for a bit before going to sleep.#

03/04/2012

This morning we were lying in and took it easy as we were going to travel via Abu Road to Mount Abu. After showers and breakfast in the hotel we finished packing and spent the remaining time relaxing until 11:00 checkout. Afterwards we spent the time before our 14:25 train departure from Jaipur in the reception area, which had seating.
Another couple from England were also waiting there and we got talking to them - turns out that she had Delhi belly and we advised them on what to do, i.e. drink water/dioralyte and when it stays down proceed to dry toast - then if that stays down, consider more adventurous foods.
At 13:30 our rickshaw, which we had booked with the hotel, arrived and we were on our way to the station. Again, Claire went and spoke to the station master and we quickly found our platform where we waited for about 30 minutes before the train arrived - and that's when the fun started.
Our booking had given us carriage G10 (AC3), seats 76-78 (side upper+lower), but there were only 75 seats in this carriage, unlike the two adjacent carriages, which both had 78. So we got on G9 and waited for the conductor to finally arrive to sort us out. He was not really very nice and after some to'ing and fro'ing he ended up planting us in the midst of 5 sweaty Indian men - so much for our own corner with no disturbances - sigh. We were a bit pissed off and when another conductor came around Claire tried to rectify the situation to no avail. We really should put in a complaint for their stupidity and incompetence (and maybe get a partial refund ;-) - but life really is too short...
Anyway, we settled and got talking to a couple of the guys there - we actually had a good conversation about India, life, the world economy, Europe and so on with one guy in particular, who was very nice. I also sampled a couple of Samosas from the local Wallah - and didn't get sick with Delhi-belly from it, despite this high-risk food acquisition approach. Claire still had a sick stomach so didn't eat much and certainly not anything off the Wallahs, just in case.
After 6:30 hours on the train we finally arrived at our destination and were immediately greeted by a horde of men wanting to bring us to Mount Abu - although overwhelming it actually worked in our favour as we didn't need to do any haggling - they did that amongst themselves in front of us until they came to an acceptable figure, which we accepted - and we were on our way on the 28km journey by Jeep.
After about an hour's drive, and after paying a weird Rs.10,- tourist tax per passenger at a Mount Abu "entrance", we arrived at our hotel at 21:45 and immediately had big misgivings.
While the hotel looked OK and was reasonably new there was a huge party going on and lots of local pop music playing with big base at a very high volume. So we immediately expressed our concerns and asked for a quiet room away from the party - the reception staff asked us not to worry as "It will all be over in half an hour". We got to our room and realised immediately that this would probably be the most noisy room in the hotel given the fact that it was under the ball room and had 3 walls facing hallways and the small garden outside (via a big glass facade) - but we decided to give it a chance.
Nearly an hour later the music finally died down and we thought this was the end - but no, then loads of young people started spilling out into the hallways and started banging doors to their rooms (the party moved from the ball room to the guest rooms), yelling and screaming, laughing, messing and even busying themselves inside the rooms in more animal ways. So I didn't fall a sleep for a long time - and neither did Claire.

02/04/2012

Today we got up at 7:00 as we had a busy schedule ahead of us - we thought. We generally slept well overn-night, at least until around 3:00 when suddenly I woke up to an unholy noise emanating initially from what I thought was the air-conditioning unit, which was already a fair bit noisy. It turned out that while the air-condition was the cause (vibration) it wasn't the new noisy bit - it was actually a broken window on top, which could move/vibrate within its frame. After thinking about a solution for about 15 seconds I finally came up with a solution - lean two 1l bottles of mineral water against the window and the vibration will be absorbed - job done  - and I could go back to sleep ;-)
Anyway, we showered and got up to have breakfast for 7:30 - we had pre-booked it last night because of the time. At 8:00 we went outside and our auto-rickshaw driver was there waiting. We said goodmorning and I went on to tell him that we didn't want to do any shopping (he asked us yesterday whether we wanted to go and see suits for me and clothes for here). After that he was in a bit of a foul mood but never mind - we ignored it and were on our way to our first stop at the Amber Fort.
It is indeed as impressive as the guide books suggest. The sheer size of it and the surrounding walls on the hills (not unlike the Chinese wall), which span between the three major Forts, must have been a daunting sight for any wood-be attackers of Jaipur in its time. Definitely worth a visit. We, like most other tourists, did the corny thing and took the elephant ride up to the Fort from the bottom, which was next to a small lake on which "floats" a big square flower garden and plantation.
Up there we first explored the vast space and courtyards and then went on to navigating the nooks and crannies around the place - it was nice and good fun. It also helped that we were there before it got really hot.
Next on the list was Jaigarh Fort, which was generally pink - just like the Old City of Jaipur. It paled in comparison to the Amber Fort but it was OK to walk around and have a look while the temperature was being cranked up to probably 40C. We also met a guy by the name of James from Bristol who was an engineer and was temporarily stationed in India as the engineering company he was working for was attempting to set up in India - so he had taken the opportunity to take some holidays and go off and explore India - nice chap indeed, and we swapped a few stories and things to do along the way.
Finally, it was Nahargarh Fort, which was also impressive but didn't have much to see by means of objects - all the rooms and courtyards etc were empty. Worth a visit nonetheless, even if it was insufferably hot around there at this point around 12:00.
Then we asked our driver to take us down to the Old City as I had spotted a barbershop near the entrance and really needed a haircut. Again, the driver was being sulky and pissy - but didn't really offer a good reason given that we were customers and had the right to make decisions about what we wanted to see and where to go - so we decided to dump him altogether - missing the Monkey Temple & sunset point with him - but we weren't really bothered at this point given temperature and amount of sights we had seen. When we reached the Old City we told him of our decision and gave him Rs. 600,- (700 was agreed, which included the temple/sunset) so he got a good deal, especially when compared to other tourist outlets and fixed trips etc. He was still pissy but we walked off and let him stew on his own - no time for that kind of crap.
So I went off to get my hair cut but there was a bit of a misunderstanding about using the trimmer (with a plastic number 9 distance yoke) and he started on my hair without one, which effectively removed nearly all my hair near my right ear before I managed to stop him. So then I told him to just trim it with scissors - but for sake of symmetry he ended up having to do the same thing on the left side - and of course, Claire was nearly pissing herself laughing with the other Indian gang while all this was going on. In the end he did an alright job (for about 80 euro cent!) and the "missing" (or rather, very short) hair didn't really look too bad after all - and with my hair growth it will have grown out before the end of the week anyway - until then I will just have to resign myself to even more curious stares - now also at my hair...
Then we went back to the same food-Wallah where we ate yesterday and had a nice Chowmeing (Claire) and Special Coconut Upanam - both were nice - with Ginger Ale and finally two cups of coffee. Just what the doctor ordered!
Afterwards we walked in the old city and through sheer spontinuity I popped into a watch shop and had a look at the selection there - and ended up buying a new watch (FastTrack). My old cheapo plastic Casio's strap was breaking and it was only a matter of time before it would get lost. So I preempted it with a bit of retail therapy - Claire picked the new watch between those that I liked so let's just hope she picked right ;-)
At this stage we had had enough and were well hot and bothered so we flagged a rickshaw and returned back to the hotel at around 16:30 where we relaxed and showered - again...
At around 18:30 we went up to the rooftop restaurant of our hotel and had vegetarian meals - both Biryanis. Claire's stomach is still sick, most likely from the antibiotics, and so I was the only one having a few beers while we were reminescing on the trip so far and the future ahead - until around 21:30 when we returned back to our room and went to bed.

Some points about Jaipur that we have found while being here:
- The people here are generally friendly - about the same level as that of Amritsar
- However, the auto-rickshaws, Wallahs, shopkeepers etc are very aggressive in their way of hanging on to you as soon as they spot you - they will sell you snake oil even if it is to get them off your back. You just have to be firm and have a firm look in your face - sometimes you may however have to resolve to outright rudeness to get them to back off - it's a balancing act - start nice and then go nuclear if the need arises
- It is unbelievably hot here - forecast will perhaps say 38-39C but it must be around 40+ at times as a light "breeze" actually feels hotter than still air.

The Amber Fort in all its glory

Inside the Amber Fort

The entrance to the Amber Fort from above

Some of the impressive architecture within the Amber Fort

The flower and plantation island as seen from the Amber Fort

A wee garden within the Amber Fort

Even the monkeys are completely conked out in this heat!

The default means of tourist transportation from the lake and up to the Amber Fort

A small park by the lake at Amber Fort

There are a lot of camels around the place in Rajasthan - but sure it's practically a desert alright!

The pink-ness of Jaigarh Fort

The largest cannon in the world rests at Jaigarh Fort - the stuff in the end could be Indian hippie equivalent of "make love and not war" - but who knows... ;-)

The Amber Fort and surroundings as seen from Jaigarh Fort

Nahargarh Fort - the west wing, I think...

Inside Nahargarh Fort there are some impressive paintings on the wall

A view over Jaipur from Nahargarh Fort - yup, it's big - as in geographically! And rests with large hills most of the way around.

Inside the Nahargarh Fort

Another section inside the Nahargarh Fort

Claire being friendly with the local donkey

We passed this (privately owned) palace on the lake at Jaipur as we were coming back - very impressive! Used to be State owned but some very loaded person bought it off them!

01/04/2012

We ordered breakfast for 8:15 this morning last night while sitting in the garden. So we got up an hour before that at 7:15 this morning, showered and then went for breakfast. The breakfast wasn't particularly great but it would keep us going for the day.
At 8:45 our rickshaw driver from last night picked us up on time and we where on our way. First off was the Hawa Mahal, the Palace of Winds, which was very impressive - and we did the audio-guide thing there, which wasn't bad. The Maharajas sure knew how to have fun with all their subjects (women) there in the old days ;-)
Next off was the City Palace, which was pricey to see when also including the audio-tour again, but worth it given that there were so many sections to see, including an artists area, armory etc.
Then we walked across to the Jantar Manter, the observatory, where we had a look at all the sundials to determine time of day, date etc. It was a very impressive and nicely kept sight - one that we'd definitely recommend.
As we had agreed to be picked up after 3 hours with the driver we still had more than an hour left on the clock by then just before 12:00 so we decided to find a restaurant and have something to eat in order to keep us going until night. So while walking along the streets of the Old City next to the palace, we found a nice little place Gokul Snacks where I had a Samosa Chhola and a Chowmeing - and Claire had a Dosa with Sambhar. Including drinks it came to Rs.209,-, which was very little - but the Samosa was the best one we have EVER tasted - it was brilliant and I must look up the recipe for when I get back home to Ireland.
Afterwards we still had 15 minutes to spare and we spotted the Iswari Minar Swarga Kendra tower so after spending about 10 minutes trying to find the entrance while I texted our driver to tell him we were going to be late, we finally found the back alley from where you could enter the tower. There we found a nice old man who took us on a guided tour while walking all the way up to the top of the 42 meter tower - there were plenty of little holes that you could look out on the way up and he stopped us at those that had a nice view of a temple, a fort etc - most on the surrounding hill ranges of Jaipur. When we finally got to the top he sat down with us and pointed at buildings and monuments across the city while explaining it all - in the end he took a bunch of pictures of us from different angles and heights and we ended up tipping him an Rs.50,- for he good work.
Then it was time for us to leave and return back to our driver who was indeed waiting for us and looking a bit apprehensive until he spotted us - but never mind, best keep them on their toes ;-)
We then drove off to the Royal Albert Hall and surrounding park where we also visited the inside museum, which held an impressive collection of weapons, old ceramics, figures, loads of pictures painted on the walls etc. We spent a good hour there before returning to the rickshaw.
Our final stop was the Royal Gaitor, which consists on a bunch of tombs laid for a few Maharajas over times. There were hardly any people there, which surprised us a lot given the impressive marble domes and buildings there - and it was QUIET and tranquil indeed - definitely well worth a 1 hour trot and some relaxation while gazing across the monuments and hill next to them.
Then he returned us back to the hotel at 15:30 and we agreed to have him bring us to see the three Forts of Jaipur and to bring us to sunset point in the evening. So early rise again in the morning with a looong day ahead. But hey, noone ever said that tourism was easy ;-)
We relaxed for a bit before going for a trot, after considerable negotiation on the food front - and I obviously had Claire have her were, down to PizzaHut, about a 20 minute walk away from here. However, on the way we spotted a dress maker and I suddenly remembered that my H2O sandy-coloured long shorts were falling apart with big holes forming and I had been considering getting them repaired (yeah, I'm a tight arse ;-) So we went in to inquire on price for repairs and asked them how long it would take - in the end one of the young shop keepers agreed to take me back 2 min down the road with his motor bike. So off we went - I did think he drove a bit funny and it was confirmed when he said: "My friend, sorry for my driving but it is my day off and I have had a few beers!" - you WHAT?!?!!? was my response. So he was drink-driving another person (tourist) and told me while driving - so much for common sense. Anyway, I kind of didn't make a big fuss about it - I was just too surprised and at the same time tired and let him get away with it.
I got back and handed him a bit of money for the petrol for his bike and then delivered the shorts to the guy. Then we trotted off again down to PizzaHut and had a couple of thin-crust pizzas and iced-tea/lemon drinks and sat there for about an hour. We walked back and on the way back we picked up the shorts - they were already done - and not only that, but he had spotted a hole at the bottom of them and repaired that too. While knowing that he was probably charging us double the local rate we happily handed him Rs.120,- (€2) and were on our way back to the hotel again.
There we just relaxed for about 1 1/2 hours before going to sleep.

The Hawa Mahal in all its glory

Very colourful play of light from the windows and onto the floor inside the Hawa Mahal

The City - the Mubarak Mahal (Welcome Palace)

The Diwan-i-Khas, Gallery with two big Silver Jars

Guinness book of records material -  two silver jars, each allegedly constructed from 14.000 silver coins

This is one of the four big doorways inside the palace

Jantar Mantar - The Observatory's main sundial

Various sundials

This is used in relation to the picture below to calculate the offset time

This sundial showed 11:25 but we add 31 minutes (see picture above) to this and get 11:56 - exactly what my Internet-NTP synchronised smartphone said ;-)

Claire tucking in her Dosa in Gokul Snacks

No idea what it says outside, but this is Gokul snacks, offering the best Samosa on the planet - no messing! ;-)

The Iswari Minar tower

Two eejits on top of the Iswari Minar tower ;-)

Royal Albert Hall inside

No tourism would be complete without the Danish touch - vases created by Peter Ipsen and shown in Jaipur, India ;-)

Royal Albert Hall from the outside and the usual entourage of pigeons everywhere

The Royal Gator - one of the tombs

Some of the stonework inside is absolutely astonishing!

Your quirky hotel room with dome and pillars - never mind the mess, we brought that ;-)

Our quirky Krishna Palace Hotel from the outside

31/03/2012

Suffice to say that neither of us got much sleep overnight on the train - the noise, light and frequent disturbances from people pulling the curtain of your berth was driving us bonkers - even Chillout music could only go so far to drown out the madness. In the end I gave up at around 8:00 and unfolded the bed so that I could sit down instead. Claire followed half an hour later - and after I checked the GPS location on the phone we realised that we were well behind schedule by about 2.5 hours.
Never mind, we were not in any hurry as today was written off anyway. We had bought muesli-bread (yum!), jam, Guava juice (really nice stuff!!!) and cheese the other day so we sat down and had a nice breakfast. But because the train was so far behind we didn't have a chance to get out of the train at the stations to pick up coffee so we had to survive without it, which was hard given the lack of sleep ;-)
In the end we arrived at 13:15 about 2 hours behind schedule, which wasn't really too bad. We then tried to ring the hotel to ask them to pick us up but we couldn't get through. In the meantime we had plenty of rickshaw drivers and other pesky individuals hovering around us and we actually had to become quite rude to get them to p*** off. In the end a local tourism approved guy helped us out by calling the hotel, as he was a friend with one of them there, and had them arrange for a driver to come and pick us up - and then proceeded to point us to where to go to wait for the driver. He was very nice and we naturally had our paranoia-armour activated while dealing with him and trying to get rid of the others. In the end I gave him Rs.40,- for helping out and said thanks  - and that "you never know who you can rely on here!" He was nice enough and even came out to check on us while we were waiting for the cab and fending off annoying individuals trying to sell us transport services not just to the hotel but also to bazaars, emporiums (my friend/wife/son/business partner etc. owns this exclusive place where they sell hand bags/shawls/figurines/jewellery etc ad nauseam - bla. bla. bla.), local tourism attraction etc...
In the end an old driver arrived and quoted us the secret code 121 that the hotel guy had given the tourist guy and us over the phone, we loaded up the car and were on our way. However, he was a pretty bad driver - unable to start the car while it was in gear and revving up the engine to move slowly through traffic - we got the distinct feeling the guy didn't even possess a driver's license. Sigh...
Never mind, we arrived in one piece at the hotel and checked in - the hotel is really quaint but quite nice and the rooms really spacious and quirky with domes and pillars in the room. We spent a few hours having showers and relaxing (Claire fast asleep, as usual) before we got up for a walk and went for something to eat.
We ended up in the Peacock Rooftoop Restaurant in the Pearl Hotel where we had a very nice meal - Vegetable Jalfrezi, a chicken curry cooked in Yogurt and Vegetable Pakora and rice to share. As Claire is currently taking the same anti-biotics that I was on because of an upset stomach I was the only one having beer and I ended up polishing off two Kingfisher 650ml bottles while there too.
When we got outside we haggled with three auto-rickshaw drivers but the first two (young) lads were too cocky in terms of haggling and walking off, as did we, so the old and more experienced guy picked us up, knowing full well that there was potential for repeat business. So we agreed to have him take us around to the main sites in the city tomorrow for 8 hours at Rs.400,-, which wasn't too bad.
Afterwards we sat down in the garden of our hotel where I had a third Kingfisher before I stumbled up to bed with Claire, watched an episode of the Big Bang Theory before going to sleep.