February 06, 2004

Dublin to Jaipur in 16 Hours

All of a sudden, I'm in India. It's all happened so fast, from leaving Dublin Airport at 8am GMT to arriving this morning in Jaipur at 7am Indian Time (1am GMT).

The BA flight was painless. No stop over, just an 8 hour non-stop flight to Delhi with plenty of movies to entertain the flight time away. I met a German couple on the plane who were getting collected at the airport and driven to Jaipur, which is were I was headed. They agreed to give me a lift to Jaipur with the lift that they had arranged.

The comfortable people carrier made the 250km journey in about four hours, whizzing along through the thick fog, veering into the oncoming traffic on the other side of the motorway whenever there was a traffic jam. You could hear the sound of German hair standing on end in the back as my knuckles whitened on the armrests of the front seat.

My inner backpacker was very disapproving at all of this seamless comfort and convenience but that was all to change as soon as we arrived, knackered, at the German's posh hotel in Jaipur.

I was prepared to pay western prices just to get some kip. There was no room at the inn though, and so I wandered around the deserted streets of Jaipur in a turbo hair-dryer called an auto-rickshaw, looking for a hotel that wasn't going to overcharge me too much after the rickshaw wallah got his cut.

There it all was, the streets littered with blanketed parcels of humanity sleeping around fires, the cows munching the rubbish, the incessant beeping of the traffic. Then the mass intoning of the morning puja and the prayers of mullahs from the minarets, audible throughout the city blending into a pervasive, atonal drone of prayer

I ended up in the "Raj Palace Hotel" on the outskirts of Jaipur. 300rs per night (about €5.50) Adequate enough fare. I needed no encouragement to sleep.

Posted by Mark at February 6, 2004 04:06 PM
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