I Can't Get No Sleep

Friday 21 November 2008
Mandawa – Jaipur

So it's back to Jaipur, the place of such great memories. Anyway before we make our way there I am woken up at 4 in the morning by someone near the hotel playing music at full volume. I eventually fall asleep again when someone in the hotel starts hammering away at 8. Given that I don't have to wake up until 11 it all feels like a bit of a waste of time.

However the one redeeming feature of this place is that rarest of things in India – a hot, powerful shower. It's a miracle! I make best use of it and have a long, sweet shower. I end up red as anything but it feels great.

I have breakfast and wait for Raj to surface. Once he does we get in the car and set off. We're ten minutes into the trip when I realise that we're already on the road to Jaipur and I actually haven't seen anything of Mendawa. A quick u-turn and we're back in town.

I'm taken on a tour of the town by a guide but the only thing worth seeing are havelis, and frankly once you've seen one haveli you've kinda seen them all. Indeed, they're all laid out to pretty much the same design by definition anyway. Plus, by now I'm having monument fatigue and frankly I'm looking forward to a change of scenery. And I don't mean Bombay, I mean Goa. Is she? I bet she is.

Anyway so I take some pictures of havelis and before long we're back on the road again. I'm tired and try to snooze but the road is busy and full of life-threatening overtaking opportunities, both for us and those coming in the opposite direction, so I don't really get the chance to sleep properly.

We stop and have lunch and I feel half dead as I need to sleep. It's worth mentioning at this point that I seem to have put on a lot of weight on this trip so far. After all, I'm eating irregularly (which means the body isn't sure when the next meal is coming, so it saves up on fat just in case), eating lots of rice and oily food, and not doing much exercise at all and indeed, spending most of my time sitting down being driven hundreds of kilometres at a time. I guess I'll have to swim a lot in Goa or something.

We hit horrendous traffic on the outskirts of Jaipur but finally make it back to the hotel. The last time we took this route I was driving. I let out an ironic, “Ah, the memories” before we check in. Incidentally there's a block-wide power cut at this point. Once again one of the fun aspects of India to contend with.

I try and sleep a bit but then seek out Raj and we have a couple of drinks and some food and then call it a night as frankly I don't have an excuse to stay awake. I'm looking forward to the overnight train trip tomorrow, perhaps.

At this juncture I'd like to point out that Raj has taught me many words in Hindi. Mainly based around the sexual organs and their function but also the numbers from one to twenty. For those interested, they are in order (English pronunciation): ek, doe, dean, char, marge, ché, saat, aat, nor, doss, yarra, barra, enterra, choda, pandra, solaar, saatra, aatra, umdisse, disse (like dix in French).