On the move

Breakfast at this morning was the last time we were to be served by Sharam and Rattiram, two very respectful young men earning their living by being waiting staff at the hotel in Jaipur.

Not only were they respectful, they were excellent at their job and more than anything were good fun! We hope to meet many more Sharams and Rattiram’s during the remainder of our stay.

Left Jaipur at 9.30 and arrived here in Gajner around 4.30pm with a 3/4hr stop for lunch.

While we have every confidence in Ashok’s ability to get us around India safely the same cannot be said for other drivers on the roads as there are some real risk takers.

It seems normal to:

Overtake on corners

Overtake on blind corners

On a 2 x 2 lane highway drive in the direction of oncoming traffic

Undertake

Drive slowly in the outside lane so that others can …..  (see above)

On a 2 lane road pass another while a car is coming in the opposite direction so as to squeeze 3 vehicles into 2 lanes. You achieve this by putting your lights on to warn the oncoming vehicle to move to the left so as to give you room.

I doubt that I would be confident enough to drive in India and certainly not in built up areas where it is crazy in the extreme. There are no rules, it is every man for himself – if you are driving in one direction and want to go back in the direction you were coming from you put your indicator on and poke the nose of the car into the oncoming lane which causes traffic to slow (a little) giving you the ability to put the nose in some more until they concede the right of way to you. 

The use of the horn seems to be a language in itself – a single hoot means watch out I’m going to pass you, a double hoot means I’m going to pass you so please move over and give me a little more room, if in a nonmoving queue a solid hoot means get going we have been sitting here too long.

The large vehicles have horns that play a 5 second or so tune and if you are near 2 or 3 that blow their horns one after the other you can hear a full symphony!

Our accommodation is  at Gajner Palace, a palace which was built in 1902 by Maharaja Sir Ganga Singh and is described as “a jewel in the Thar Desert”. It was converted to a heritage hotel in 1976. The complex stretches over 6000 acres.

Our room was described to us as the President’s Room and it is superb, consisting of a extremely large bedroom/lounge, a large bathroom and a walk in changing room – we couldn’t have asked for better!

As we entered the reception area on arrival there was a musical group playing to welcome us, we walked up the red carpet into reception, offered a welcoming drink of rose water and had a string of beads put around our necks – they certainly want you to feel special.

However we find that there was to be a pre-wedding reception in the courtyard early this evening for the men attending the wedding and we were lucky enough to be out the front when the proper arrival occurred and now there were 2 camels standing guard on each side of the red carpet which was now not obviously in place for us nor it seems were the musicians!

We were lucky enough to see the group enter the hotel with full honours from the Indian band and the video of that is here.