Road to Jaipur

Last Friday I was sitting in my office when suddenly I had a brilliant idea, a road trip to Jaipur. I have been wanting to visit Jaipur since arriving in India 18 months ago and for some reason or other, never actually did it. Manuel had a birthday party Friday night, so we started out at 6 on Saturday morning, our driver Ashok looking alert as always. For the 5 hour trip, about an hour is spent just getting out of the Delhi area, but once out, everything changes. The landscape is greener and the hills are almost surprising after being used to the flat terrain of Delhi. That is also the same area when the camels start appearing with regularity.

When I was growing up, we did a lot of road trips and would often pass the time looking for out-of-state plates or we would make lists of things to find on the journey and the person who saw the most things on the list was the winner. In between those games, we would play the games of children like “Don’t touch me” and “Don’t look out my window” – Manuel passed his time pointing out camels.

Ooooh, there’s a camel there.

I kept myself occupied on Twitter via my iPhone. The great thing about something like Twitter, is that it lets me share a trip like that with my best friend (or anyone else who cares to follow, for that matter) even when he is 12 ½ time zones away. Sometimes that is the hard part of living abroad. I see so many wonderful things that I know certain people would just love to see. So, I decided to take them along with me and it was great. The next best thing to having them here. And the best part, it is all instant and live. If I saw something I knew someone would like, I immediately sent it and a minute later I had a response. Brilliant!

Look, there’s another camel.

About two hours into the trip we decided to stop for breakfast. The original plan was to stop at Neemrana Fort, but there as a wedding happening and so the place was fully booked and they were not accepting non-guests for breakfast or even a coffee, so we stopped at a roadside place to stretch and have a bite and 20minutes later we were speeding down highway toward Jaipur.

A camel… I like it to see the camels on the road like this.

Oh my God, there’s a naked man walking on the road.

I turned around in time to see the backside of naked walking man. Just the sight of him was enough to keep Manuel buzzing for about ten minutes. The rest of the drive down was often interrupted with comments like “I don’t understand why the man he was walking down the street without the clothes” or “I can’t believe the man was just walking with no clothes!”

One would think he had never seen a naked man strolling down the highway before.