India and that

Well, Hamish and I are now in Jaipur, Rajistan. Can honestly say it is not our favourite town; there is rotting filth everywhere and children covered in flies go through the rubbish bins which smell so bad that we have to hold our breath when we walk past them.

There are many animals scurrying about, mainly cows and goats but in Jaipur there are also a lot of massive pigs which roll around in the rubbish and squeal with delight. There is an excess of mangy dogs; we saw one that looked like its skin was falling off and it was blind in both eyes and had a limp. As I took a photo of it, the wretched thing scurried into a pile of refuse and picked up a chickens foot in its teeth.

We were also almost victim to a jewel scam; a long story but it involved us having a little too much faith that the little Indian man with a scar on his face who stopped us in the street and asked us why foreigners avoid Indian people seemed genuinely interested in us as people and was quite happy to sit and talk about cultural divides with us. He was an artist and tried to sell us his hand drawn Karma Sutra pictures, but apart from this he was nice enough. He told us that he once had a New Zealand girlfriend, 'Stacey,' who was a truck driver from Wellington and had too 'big an ego inside' to make a long term relationship really work. He also told us about his other New Zealand friend, who was prison guard in Auckland. He then made everyone a bhang lassi and asked us how many wives we had.

Several hours later, we went for a beer with the uncle of our new found friend who ended up disappearing and leaving us with the toad-like Brahman uncle and some sort of sleazy nephew in a cheap suit who gave us a packet of cigarettes. Stoned, we half listened them boast about how many million ruppees they made on a weekly basis and that lying was ok if it was done 'for the greater good.' And then the convesation came to its inevitabe conclusion, What about if the two us were to make a quick buck by smuggling some precious jewels back into Australia with us? They talked about loop holes, we looked nervously towards the door and lit another cigarette. No strings attached apparently, except casual tax evasion. The whole situation was made more ridiculous by the fact that we had just spend the day before reading an article in the Lonely Planet (our second copy after our first one was stolen by a man with no teeth on the train to Agra) about how so many stupid tourists still fall for the 'gem scheme.' Hamish had then guffawed but after the incident at hand (which grew quite nasty with raised voices and slamming of hands on the table), he hung his head; we both did. we bought a bottle of whiskey on the way back to our guesthouse.

Tomorrow we head to Pushkar; an apparently beautiful holy place with a holy lake at its centre. Jaipur is rather a fail city; gem scam aside. My bowels are getting edgy with vegetable curry twice a day which is a pity given that it is the best curry I have ever had in my life (and costs virtually nothing). Our hotel, the Red Tomato Hotel Palace is a grand, 'Shining'-esque building, complete with a man throwing up (loudly) at 1am and then again at 6am. I am reading A Fine Balance and Hamish is reading Midnight's Children, token travellers that we are. Still, we sat across from an even more offensive pair of English girls at dinner last night who were both reading John Grisham (The Rainmaker and A Time to Kill respectively) and who sent their malia kofta back to the kitchen in a rage because it was too spicy. Bovved.