The Idyll Diaries

I was informed, by way of a phone call by the travel agent, that a taxi would collect me outside the Taj Hotel at 7pm.  It would, all going well, drive me into Ajmer from where I’d catch my bus to Udaipur at 9.30pm.  At 8.30pm I was still sitting on the kerb outside the Taj Hotel; no sign of a taxi.   Numerous phone calls to the travel agent provided a little reassurance (‘No problem Madam, India time yar? Taxi is coming’) but no solid confirmation I’d make it to Ajmer on time.

A phone call from Tom briefly distracted me from the situation.  Apparently he was in Varanassi ‘sitting on a cloud drinking angel’s milk’.  Whatever he was on I wanted some!  He sounded blissfully happy and it made for a lovely, if very peculiar phone call.

Anyway,  at around 9pm a rickshaw arrived to collect me.  It was filled with three French men so I dumped my backpack under the driver’s seat and climbed onto the exhaust pipe.  Clinging on for dear life, we were driven, not to Ajmer but to the far side of Pushkar.  There, we were dragged up onto the roof of an already packed minivan and driven into Ajmer.

In Ajmer we made our bus with a maximum of three seconds to spare.  I climbed into my berth/cage/coffin and was rocked to sleep by a very bumpy road.  Bollywood movies blaring full blast provided my lullaby.

At around 4am I was rudely awoken by another grumpy Indian grabbing at my feet whilst roaring orders to disembark.  We had arrived in Udaipur more than three hours early.  I shared a taxi to Hanuman Ghat with one of the French men from the previous night’s rickshaw ride.  We were greeted by heavily bolted doors; our persistent ringing of hotel doorbells was simply ignored.  Wearied from our journey we lay down on the street and slept there until the sun rose.  On awakening we discovered we’d been joined in our slumber by two dogs and what looked like a toothless tramp.  Not my proudest moment!

I was collected from the chai wallah shack outside the ‘bus station’ and escorted (dragged) to the bus by a particularly grumpy old man.  The bus wasn’t even close to the standards of the one we’d taken from Hospet to Chaudi.  My berth looked like a painful cross between a cage and a coffin.  A brutal way to spend my first hours alone.

In my cage/coffin on the bus. Lovely!

Within the first half hour off the journey three Indian men had opened the door of my cage in order to indulge in a little staring! I necked a few diazepam to stave off tears and induce sleep.

A fairly hideous picture of me whilst sound asleep. Worryingly I have absolutely no idea who took it!

Seven hours later the driver was hauling roughly at my ankles.  We’d arrived in Ajmer, 3 hours early. At 5am. I was unceremoniously dumped onto a dark street before the bus drove off.  I wandered a little in search of an elusive rickshaw.  Alas, it wasn’t to be.  I did find two German girls curled up by the road side.  They looked very young and were clearly a bit frightened.  One of them was in tears. I joined them, offered them my very best words of encouragement and then together we found ourselves a rickshaw to drive us into Pushkar.  What should have been a straight forward 30 minute journey descended into a complete farce in a matter of minutes!  It turned out that our driver wasn’t a driver at all.  He was, in fact, the extremely perverted delivery man for all of Pushkar’s newspapers.  After about a million stops the rickshaw was all but bursting with papers.  They were literally crammed into every available space, including our seats. I ended up sharing a seat with the driver, the tiniest German girl balancing precariously on my lap.  I had to insist on another stop so I could lecture and threaten the driver regarding his persistence to fondle the tiny German’s legs. Then there was another stop so he could apologise by gifting us chai. Then there were a hundred more stops so we could deliver the papers, pray to various shrines and feed some cows (for good karma apparently!).  When the rickshaw was finally emptied of news we were dropped off at our guesthouse. I’m currently sitting in the garden with a chai and a maaza waiting for a room to be cleaned for me.  Fingers crossed it happens soon.  I am shattered.