Jaipur

Our first night in Jaisalmer, we tried planning our onwards journey. Our original itinerary had Bikaner as our next stop, but after looking on RedBus (the go-to website for booking buses in India), we soon realised the buses that were available to Bikaner either departed or arrived at a really peculiar hour, and of course, no trains had any available seats. I had my heart set on visiting Pushkar as I wanted to attend their annual camel festival, which, when I did my initial research, I thought was for the whole of November. Now, when I rechecked about the camel festival, I saw that its final day was when we were still in Jaisalmer, which meant we changed our travel route, so we skipped both Pushkar and Bikaner, and our next stop would be Jaipur. We opted for the 12-hour sleeper bus, which arrived in Jaipur at 6:30 am.

Weirdly, we were all asked to get off the night bus half way through the journey and change onto a new bus. Other travellers used this opportunity as a quick toilet stop whilst the drivers were sorting out moving the bags for all of those who had opted to put them in the hold. As I got off the bus, I looked to my left and I could see one man relieving himself at the side of the road. I was also after the toilet, so I was frantically asking the drivers in the hope they could point me to one between the bus changes, but unfortunately, I hadn’t learnt the word for “bathroom” in Hindi and they couldn’t speak English. At this point, I took a mental note to add “toilet” to my vocab for learning. Eventually, someone pointed out the toilet on the bus for me to use (which I had already eyed up but very unhelpfully it was just a urinal, not something I’ve managed to figure out how to use as a woman, and I really wasn’t up for trying to figure it out there and then!) I ended up just going at the side of a dark road, hoping I wasn’t going to collide into any cows or their faeces. Mission complete, and I was now ready to go back to sleep on the new bus. As usual, we arrived earlier than expected into Jaipur at a cracking time of 6:30 am. We got off the bus to a herd of tuk-tuk drivers all wanting to offer their services. James actually got the brunt of it; for some reason, I was a few metres behind him, but all the tuk-tuk drivers in the meantime had huddled around him, but as soon as I said “nahe chaiyee” in Hindi, they quickly dispersed (it means “not needed”). We did actually need one, but the worst thing is being put on the spot when you’re half asleep. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get one on Uber, so had to hail one down in the end, and of course, I hailed down the worst type of tuk-tuk – it was electric; however, it wasn’t very enclosed and as we were riding along, James mentioned it’s definitely not the safest. We got to our hotel in one piece and vouched to not get this type of tuk-tuk again.

Learning from when we arrived early in Udaipur on a sleeper bus last time where we fell asleep for many hours at the hotel, James had a brilliant idea of pre-booking a tuk-tuk tour so we were committed to doing something. James booked the tour through Airbnb. Naresh, our tour guide for the day, met us bang on 9 am at our hotel, the Ibis.

We had done no research for what we wanted to do in Jaipur and were putting all of our faith into Naresh to put on a grand tour of his city. He first asked us if we had our own itinerary we wanted him to do or to follow his recommendations; we quickly opted for his! We had an absolutely jam-packed day of sightseeing and definitely made our money’s worth of touring with Naresh. Naresh gave us a great money-saving tip to buy a combo ticket so we could go into all the attractions he recommended. We also went with his advice to get the two-day combo ticket and then cover the places closer to our hotel the next day. Our tour started at the Albert Museum – I really wasn’t fussed by this museum, but we thought as Naresh had recommended it, we had best visit it. We then made our way to the old city to the three forts. Naresh included a few places not on the combi ticket which were an absolute gem, including a tomb. On our way back to the hotel, we went into a clothing factory where they showed us around, demonstrated how they do clothe dyeing, and of course, also tried to sell us lots of clothes – they were lovely, but the prices were very pricey compared to the linen clothes we bought in Udaipur, so we took the business card and said we would be back, knowing full well we wouldn’t be.

We had to apologise a few times throughout the day to Naresh that we were a bit tired from the sleeper bus. We actually opted for Naresh to take us back to the hotel slightly earlier than expected as we were so tired. Naresh has a two-year-old son, so we said he could go home and spend a bit more time with his son, but he said no as after our tour he was then going back out on his tuk-tuk to do journeys for the locals meaning he won’t get home until 10 pm. He said the cost of living is very expensive, so he has to work these very long days, seven days a week but would be taking his son’s second birthday off in two days’ time.

After doing the full day in a tuk tuk, we realised how bad the pollution was. For context this coincided with the time when there were all the news updates about the severe pollution in Delhi. We were feeling it so badly we opted for cars instead of Tuk-tuks as well as limiting our time outside. I wasn’t very well in Jaisalmer, and James was starting to also not feel well, with all the pollution around it was challenging to breathe in clean fresh air. I reflected on this and just realised how much we take clean air in the UK for granted and despite everyone moaning about ULEZ, it is actually very good for public health. It got me searching how pollution affects health and I was shocked at how many life years living in a polluted place takes off someone.

Despite finding some running routes already for Jaipur and booking our hotel close to these routes, we actually opted to use the hotel’s gym for the entirety of our stay. We both don’t like treadmill running, but we were really suffering from the pollution and sadly I think this definitely took a bit of the joy away from our time in Jaipur. It also meant we rethought our onward plans for Delhi and decided to skip visiting Delhi this time and instead fly straight to Amritsar from Agra.

Our second day was dictated around the combo ticket, meaning we explored the pink city starting off in Hawa Mahal, Jantar Mantar and lastly Isarlat Swargasuli Tower. Hawa Mahal was absolutely gorgeous with its pink architecture and its 954 windows.

Our last day, we had booked a train to Agra at 2 pm. The only problem was when I checked our seats at 11 am I noticed the train was over six hours delayed! – quite annoying as if I knew earlier I wouldn’t have woken up so early to go to the gym! At first I wasn’t sure if I was reading it correctly and was almost hoping that someone would tell me I read it wrong. As this was going to be our first train we weren’t too sure if it was legitimately going to be this late and whether we should still show up to the train station or just get to the train station for when it says online. After asking advice from a few people, we opted to get to the station for the train’s original time to check it was actually delayed, we were told sometimes it’s incorrect online.

.