Let’s go cycling

Day 41-42 in India

1100km by train…well that took away a bit of pedal power! But oh my, Indian trains. They are something…even when you book a first class cabin…
There was nothing terribly plush about first class…so just imagine what the crowded sleeper class would have been like! We did have the luxury of a cabin to ourselves and a door that, well, could be locked. If it wasn’t actually bolted it was opened periodically by someone enquiring whether we’d like a chai… or a sandwich…or something else we couldn’t understand 🙂 Or, by the train floormen, barging in and insisting they “make up” the bed or put a pillowcase on the skanky pillows for us. Despite attempted firm “no thankyou”s and “we’ll do it”s, we were almost physically shoved out of the way to allow an overweight puffing guy to turn our couch into a bed and throw a sheet on it…and then of course demand a handsome tip for the privilege of doing something we didn’t want him to do in the first place. This happened a few times (first was a little assistance lifting our luggage aboard), so by the time we arrived in Jaipur we’d wisened up a bit to the fact that we were seen as a complete soft touch. We determinedly held on to our own luggage to alight and tried to make our heavy panniers look like featherweights so that noone would try and “help” us.
Given that the railway uniforms had their pockets loudly emblazoned with “I DO NOT ACCEPT TIPS” it was all a bit bamboozling. I couldn’t help but confront one of them with this instruction but to no avail…and the next time we saw him he’d managed to cover the embroidery over with something.

Off the train. Stood around for a bit trying to work out where we might be able to pick up our bikes. That was also a mistake. Beggar central. And not nice ones! In your face, demanding money and becoming quite angry with a refusal. All a bit offputting I must say.

Anyhow…we put our trust in a persistent tuk tuk driver who told us that the parcel pick up area (for the bikes) was actually 2km away!! We let him take us to our hotel to regroup and have a feed and a shower…then walked back to find the Parcel pick up area.

Simple, right? The bikes were clearly there.  Albeit a bit roughed up…a few dents and scratches that weren’t there when we checked them in.  But nothing major 🙂

We had the receipts for travel. But somehow it took the best part of two hours before they’d release the bikes to us. Ah well…all part of the fun!

After a day of feeling like we’d been scammed at every opportunity,  the guy who pulled out his craft knife to quickly help unravel the layers of plastic with no hint of any money required was a breath of fresh air! It’s so lovely when a simple thankyou is sufficient payment…

This is one of the things that we are struggling with in the cities. The constant demands for money, the inability to even pause to look at a map without a loaded offer of “help” means that we are always on our guard,  and sometimes unnecessarily defensive.  There really are plenty of wonderful people who aren’t just after our wallets and we sometimes have to stop ourselves from making those initial assumptions.

Then…a quick ride back to our lovely heritage accommodation and that’ll about do for this day!

Day 43 in India

Another day,  and Jaipur redeemed itself somewhat.  A fascinating city, lots of pink stonework!  And plenty of extraordinary palace buildings to fill in a day of sightseeing. The narrow “Hal Mahal” was particularly striking with its many window alcoves facing into the street… for the women to watch processions without being seen. 

Tourists everywhere and more Westerners than we’ve seen in our whole travels so far.

And a bit of an explore of the backroads around Jaipur was quite uplifting- the “real” Jaipur was full of joyful smiling people and no demands. 
Just love it!

Day 44- Jaipur to Mehandipur

We had to edge our cycles through the huge crowds, with bright colours, smoke from fire crackers and incense everywhere. There was plenty of positivity but it was overshadowed by the wailing and crying, many were sick and dying and it felt awkward and invasive to be pushing and winding our way through the throngs to where we thought our hotel should be. It wasn’t. The Google map address was wrong, so with some trepidation we had to retrace our steps through the crowds to find an alternative!