Creatively titled: #2

Keeping you all updated is going to be quite the challenge but...as my buddy mr Fogerty says: put me in coach, I'm ready to play.

I sure didn't tell very many stories in the last post. I left you at Tuesday evening. We slept without ac and we lived to tell the story.

The next morning we didn't have a plan so we went in search of adventure! But first we found breakfast: eggs, toast and coffee for the three of us for just over $10. After that we hit up the Main Street and headed to Connaught place: a circle of stores. As we were walking an older gentleman started talking to Teresa about the weather, literally. Before we knew it this man had the three of us in a rickshaw (a mini taxi-like vehicle), told us how much to pay the driver (a bonus because we don't know price scales yet) 20 rupees (equivalent to just under 50 cents) and told him to take us to the government tourist office in Connaught place. This is where trust won out and without hesitation we jumped into the rickshaw. Thankfully he brought us to the door of the government tourism office.

We were greeted warmly by Rajan. He asked us what our careers were (we are all teachers) and was pleased with our answer. He was a tremendous help. We came I with ideas on what we wanted to see in India and how we were going to get there but he took all of our hopes and figure out ALL the details for us! He booked us hostels, train tickets, airline tickets, he found he a personal driver and accompanying car AND...AND he booked us for a free camel safari and a free elephant ride. The funniest part of the meeting? Partway through, out if nowhere, Rajan looks at me and says, "what you teach? Physical education?" I just stared back. "You teach physical education: look at you." Not sure what that is supposed to mean but it was hilarious, and came out of left field. Anyhow I'm sure some o you are thinking to yourselves "this is a lie. Can't be true. They got duped". Well...I'm 98% confident in saying we did not get duped. So far all is well: we have a driver who knows everything about the province were in. Ok, we're not sure in that part. He knows how to get everywhere but his English is so squat limited so we don't know what he actually knows. But he is careful and protective of us so that's fun. What's more fun is to say 

"we have a driver" (disclaimer: must be said with a British accent) It's not as good as if we had a gardener...but it's a start.

So our locations are booked and we have a plan. For those of you that like details the order is as follows: 

Tuesday: arrival

Wed: meet up the tourist guy and our trip is flipped around and organized. Did we mention that this service was all free? Yeah Indian government trying to promote off-season tourism. Bikaner

Thursday: Jaisalmer

Friday: Jodhpur (the blue city)

Saturday: Pushkar

Sunday/Monday: Jaipur

Tuesday/Wednesday: Agra (Taj Mahal)

Thursday: Varanasi

Friday-Wednesday: Kolkata

Thursday-Saturdah: Goa

Sunday: unknown

Monday: leave India 

On Wednesday after our delightful visit to the tourism office we decide to get the party started right away. We checked out of our hostel a day early and began to drive to bikaner, west of Delhi. This whole experience was quite dominican for me. We were first told it was a four or five hour drive. The times kept getting longer. We ended up driving for eleven hours. We arrived at our hotel at 2am. It took so long because, being the rainy season, the roads were filled with potholes (in addition to the random/sporadic speed bumps), we often were driving on a one lane-ish road (anytime here was incoming traffic it was quite the maneuver to get everyone by) and cows have the right of way. And there are a lot if cows. at one point in the journey, not wanting to lead my blog-readers astray, I decided to be scientific and actually count the amount if cows I saw in five minutes. I kid you not: from 5:15-5:20 we passed 68 cows. Thats a lot of hamburgers! All of this to say that going 50 km/hr was quite the joy.

Speaking of Dominican, lets do a quick comparison. In the DR told sit around domino tables for hours in the evenings. In India men sit/squat on blankets on the ground to play cards/chat: what's the similarity? Women do not seem to partake in these activities. I've only been here for a couple days but I find it astounding how few women you see around here. It is always men who are out and about in the evenings and also there are far more men in the daytime. In the evenings you really dont see women. Interesting.

Another observation thus far is that there is much less traditional India dress here then I see back home. There are few turbans and few full saris. Again, I can't tell you why I can just tell you what I saw.

Tis all for now. Adventures in Jaisalmer next!