Day Seventeen

After another great breakfast at the hotel, Parminder and I hit the road for Jodhpur. We have trouble communicating sometimes, and the drive I thought would be three hours turned into six. I don’t mind time in the car, but would have brought a box lunch if I’d known how long it would take. Between the major cities is an unending stream of farms, towns, and open wilderness. There are no rest stops, and there are no quality restaurants. Luckily I had some muffins from the day before and a new set from this morning. I had one. Parminder had six. His fear of western foods does not extend to muffins.

Jodhpur is about 325 km west of Jaipur. A good portion of the way took us along a three lane highway littered with toll booths. We make good time, but there’s not much to see. But driving in India is always entertaining. I’ve written about the incessant honking and open disregard for proper lanes, but I don’t think I’ve talked about the trucks. Rather than big-rig trailer trucks, India has fleets of cargo trucks with large open pickup beds. Goods and materials are loaded up to the brim, and sometimes covered with tarps. When the trucks are hauling animal feed, or some other grain-type material, the beds are filled with giant sacks into which the merchandise is packed. These bags overflow the beds and are lashed to the sides by dozens of ropes. Often packed taut, the sacks swell under the ropes. The effect is like a growing air balloon emerging from the truck, almost full enough to take to the skies. I call these trucks muffin-tops. The face of the trucks are painted bright colors and decorated with hindu symbols and other pieces of flare. They look exactly like Optimus Prime if he were a Mexican wrestler. The rear of the trucks are festive as well. In addition to being painted with their company affiliation, they all bare the phrase, in bold decorative type, “Horn Please”. This is in reference to the need for these trucks to hear you coming from behind lest they change lanes and push you off the rode. The irony of this phrase is not lost on the people as I saw a girl’s T-Shirt with the face of a truck on the front and the rear on the back, complete with the bold “Horn Please”. I’ve yet to see the phrase on booty shorts. That might be to provocative. Some of the trucks bare the additional slogan “Use Dipper at Night”. I’m pretty sure that’s instructing us to use our brights, but I can’t help but feel dirty every time I read it.

Rajasthan is mostly desert, so much of the drive looks like Palm Springs. I expect to see signs for the outlet malls around every turn. There are even gnarled trees, clawing their way out of the ground that look strikingly like Joshua trees. Parminder tells me they’re called Babur trees, and in addition to being used for animal feed, they’re harvested to make a local toothpaste. When they’ve been cut back close to the trunk and they’ve just started to leaf again, they look especially like Joshua trees. It’s a beautiful drive. I put my music on shuffle and doze for much of it.

Parminder wakes me to point out the roadside shops selling mammoth marble slabs. It’s quarried from nearby hills and sold especially here. There’s so much marble around, being carried, cut, and polished, that the air is thick with the dust. It’s a purgatory of marble and we cannot see more than two car lengths in front of us. We drive slow. I see stacks and stacks of marble similar to what you see at Home Depot for countertops, but also giant blocks of marble as big as our car. These remind me of the corner pieces I saw at the Maharajah’s palace the day before. Indian masons did not use mortar, so whenever possible, columns and arches would be cut from a single piece. Further, symmetry was paramount so pieces meant to mirror each other are cut from the same block as well. These are the blocks I’m seeing. We pull over where souvenirs are cut from these stones and I pick up a few pieces. They’re heavy for carrying back home, but if those blocks can be moved from the mountains to the palace, I can lug my trinkets through customs.

Having skipped lunch, we arrive at the hotel at 2:30. I’m irritated we didn’t have a place to stop and eat, so I leave Parminder to fend for himself and escape into the fortress of tourism. This is more of a traditional hotel than the last two. Those were very private and designed to keep guests separated. This has large common spaces, accentuating the fact that the hotel is empty. I sit out on the patio and have a light lunch. I read my book by the pool. I have the whole place to myself. The only other person poolside is an attendant whose job it is to keep the pigeons from landing at the edge of the pool. There are twelve of them. They perch at the edge of the water and dunk their heads. They drink and douse themselves. The attendant is great at clapping his hands, and stomping at them to get them to fly away. To the other side of the pool. This goes on continuously for about thirty minutes. I tell him, “I think you should give up. You can’t fight nature.” He chuckles and says, “Yeah?” in a knowing way. I ask, “Do they do this all day?” and he says, “Yeah?” in a knowing way. I ask how long he’s been doing this. Again I get, “Yeah?” which is sounding less knowing to me by the second. I return to my room to read. Maybe this is why the pool is empty.

The guide (J.D.) picks me up at 6pm to take me on a tour of old Jodhpur. This involves walking around the local market and discussing the local culture. It’s as chaotic as Delhi and I’m surprised he takes tourists into the madness. He’s not very protective and I have to dodge tuktuks and motorbikes. We just walk and talk and he points out some of the local businesses and the odd places people live. The city is about 500 years old, so the streets are narrow and twisted. We make a few dozen left turns and end up back where we started. I’m surprised that he hasn’t suggested any shops, but then I realize this was all just preparation for guiding me to the calm atmosphere of a textile warehouse. All the guides have arrangements with this or that shop. I don’t know how it works, but they must get some type of kickback from the merchant for bringing in new customers. Considering what I do for a living, I can’t judge too harshly, but I feel vulnerable not having someone on my side when dealing with the salesmen. I have no idea what these things are worth. They could be of the lowest quality and fail as gifts. I leave the textile shop without buying anything, though they do have some beautiful designs. But what am I going to do with rando swaths of fabric? I do buy a few things at a spice shop, but I haggle a bit and walk out feeling a distinct chill from my guide. This happens every time. I suppose I should pay what they ask and be done with it, but I can’t bring myself to surrender.

I make peace by asking a lot of questions and insisting on taking him (and Parminder) to dinner. J.D. recommends a place called On The Rocks, which in addition to having an ample bar menu has a great atmosphere. It’s all artificial, but the restaurant is set in a stone grotto with fire pits between every few tables. The food is fantastic and we have a great time. It was one of the least awkward meals I’ve had since leaving Habitat. We talk about how the local economy works. J.D. makes me feel bad for not spending money at the textile warehouse. It sounds like there is a lot of trickle-down to the lowest levels. He says a majority of the 1.5mm people in Jodhpur are employed in the handicraft industry. They either work in factories, or from home. I learned at the warehouse that they employ about 20,000 people in 8,000 families. Housewives will work a few hours a day on textiles whenever they can find the time. They embroider individual patches that are then assembled at the factory. The logistics of all this is kind of staggering. There are so many people, each working on their own portion of thousands of different pieces. All those people need to be trained, instructure, supervised, paid. And I just know they have a pen and ink system for keeping track of it all. I asked the guy how many pieces of fabric he had in his warehouse and he looked confused and gestured at everything around us saying, “All of these.”

We have very little shared culture to base our conversations on, so dinner is mostly me asking questions. But it’s a good time, and J.D. warms up when we started talking about the work I did with Habitat. I still have a lot of doubts about the value of that work, but it’s nice that people appreciate the intent to help. I get the sense they’re confused about why we’d do that type of work also. The consensus is that we should have been teaching the children english and computer skills. It’s frustrating that these are two things I happen to know something about, yet spent two weeks digging and hauling. Not that this is an easy answer. Coming up with a curriculum to introduce the slum kids to english and technology is no easy task. It’s something I have to think about for a while and see if I can find a way to contribute.

I’m back at the hotel for about twelve hours when I leave for my sightseeing around Jodhpur. There’s a fort and a palace, and then it’s off to Osian for a night in the desert.