Day 1

I randomly found my journal today, while looking for something else altogether. I suppose I had sort of hidden it and forgotten about it. Maybe now it will be more of an interesting experience to go through the trip on the other side of a couple of months.

Day 1
We grabbed a few hours of sleep and then had breakfast at the hotel. We piled all our massive amounts of luggage into a nice big tourist van, and now we're on our way to Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan. Jaipur is known as the Pink City; apparently, it was painted that color to celebrate the arrival of Prince Albert in about 1870.

I see so many signs of the land of contradiction India has been growing into. We drove by the construction site of a gigantic mall, built by DLF Retail, whose signs plastered across the city proclaim that it is "building India." And yet right next to the site were a dozen or so shoddy poor excuses for houses made of what looked like salvaged scrap. Underneath a highway overpass, I say five small boys all alone on a small mat. Two of them were lying down with their feet towards us, and I saw they were caked in mud and dirt. It's hard for me to understand, let alone accept, that a self-proclaimed modern "socialist" (in the sense that the government plays a much larger role in the economic sector) country could permit and promote such abject poverty, while all the while blasting news of India's newfound economic prominence.

We ate lunch on the way at this place on the highway called "Hotel King." I thought the food was pretty damn good, and I also discovered that Shreya is very much like I was when I was her age. Not only is she adorable with very curly hair, but she redecorates her face and clothes with every meal that she eats. She also loves playing with things she could easily break, as well as grabbing silverware and beating it against a table or plate as loud as she can. However, she is less sociable (at least at first) and far more attached to her mom than I was.

By the time we reached Jaipur, Kirtana and I had become steadfast friends, despite the fact that neither of us can speak our secondary languages very well. I'm starting to get a little bit better, though, and least with stuff I already knew or used to know. We got to Jaipur at about 4 PM, too late to see Amber Fort. Instead, we checked out the Jaipur City Palace.

Really, most everything of interest there will show up in the pictures we took. I guess now that forces me to make a photoblog. (I promise to post some photos when I have more time/motivation.)

Well, after we finished at the palace, we headed to where a group of people were selling camel rides. There I had a most interesting experience.

The leader of the group--the one who dealt with the customers--was a boy of about 11 or 12 years. His face was angular, and his eyes squinted from constantly blocking out the harsh Rajasthani sun. His clothes were relatively stylish (I saw hordes of men and boys wearing jeans and long sleeve dress-type shirts that resembled club wear) but rather filthy. He, my uncle, and our driver (who was the only one of us who spoke Hindi) argued and haggled for a healthy span of time, during which my brother was instructed to climb on and off the platform repeatedly based on the current state of the proceedings. There was an adult man with the group, but he seemed a few steps lower on the chain of command than the first kid. Finally, we settled on everything, and my cousin, my brother, and I all got up on the platform to mount the camels.

The camel seemed impossibly big in contrast with my mental image of what a camel should be: about the same size as a horse, if not smaller. I felt the hot, dusty air whipping across my hair as I made a precarious jump across the rather hard saddle. I looked down from my lofty perch at the camel's back and winced to see his spine standing out in painful definition from the rest of his body. Disregarding thoughts of disease or dirt, I tried to caress the camel discreetly in a small gap in the gaudily patterned cloths that served as cushioning. His hair was long enough, but so rough as to feel bristly. I began to feel slightly sick about the baubles and colorful fringed cloth covering and maybe even stifling the camel, but it was too late to give up the ride, and I wanted to see what riding a camel was like anyway.

A small, dark-skinned, slender boy came to lead my camel. He pulled hard to get the camel moving, but I saw no harshness or impatience, only a simple love and respect for his friend and means of survival. Being the last person to mount, I could see the other boys shouting their camels and yanking their ropes in an effort to speed up the ride to get back for the next customer. I looked down to see the boy leading my camel walking peacefully, smiling as he looked around at the dusty street and then up at me.

He gestured towards my brother on a camel and said in a fairly high, slightly hoarse voice, "Beeg broe-tha?" Confused because I was unsure what language he was attempting to speak, I looked at him for another second before he clarified. "Bhai?" he asked again. Recognizing the Hindi word for older brother, I nodded emphatically. He grinned widely at this breakthrough in communication.

After we had made the turn at the end of the agreed distance, he spoke to me again.
"Who are you?"
Misunderstanding him, I replied "I'm from America."
He leaned back to express his wonder. "America? Wow."
A few steps later, he turned to me again and asked, "You have name?"
"Siva," I repeated a few times until he heard me correctly.
He nodded with satisfaction and then explained, "I am Ali. This camel is name Suraj."
I patted Suraj again and felt overwhelmingly like a tourist.

By this time, we had fallen far behind the other camels. I could see my cousin's camel had decided it deserved a break and started to browse some of the foliage by the side of the road. Some of the other boys had been summoned to give the camel some physical motivation. Ali started to speak again.

"I am camel driver," he proclaimed with audible pride. I contemplated the probable fact that this was the only life Ali had really ever known and that he was more than happy to continue leading tired, overworked, dusty camels for people who didn't deserve to sit above him for the rest of his life. I wondered what the world really had in store for this friendly kid with a bright smile. Would he stay as happy and content as he was now, or would he slide into the crusty worldliness of the leader? He interrupted my musings as he gestured broadly out towards the fort visible in the distance across desert land and said, "Rajasthan is famous for camels." I nodded to show my agreement. By now, I had figured out the secret to riding without seriously endangering future generations of Sundarams; I had to lean back a bit and sway with Suraj. Ali noticed my smile at my riding success. He asked, "Is it good? You like?" I smiled and nodded appreciatively, not trusting speaking in English with my American accent.

We reached our starting point again, with my uncle snapping pictures of us as we approached. A very small boy on a bicycle rode up to the platform, a huge bag of presumably camel food on his back and the seat. I climbed down and walked around to face Suraj. I noticed his enormous, watery brown eyes and his extremely long lashes, flickering closed against the sun. I looked more closely and saw the rope tied to a small wooden rod through his nose. Before my moment of guilt washed over me, I was whisked away into the van to head off to our next destination. I glanced back once more before I got inside. I saw Ali, a small, dark silhouette dwarfed by the camel next to him. And that was it.