Thursday, April 11, 2013

RTW Trip: Day 43 (4/7) - Bangalore & Jaipur



Day 43: An Adult Birthday

Today was my first real birthday as an adult. Sure, I turned 21 last year, but turning 21 is a cause for celebration, the last real birthday that matters in life for anything other than milestones. At 21 you can drink, gamble and basically be an adult, but turning 22 is nothing special, and for me, it was doubly so. For once, I had a real adult birthday in that it was just another day with traveling, a nice dinner, a nice show, one main present and a few phone calls. Low-key birthdays, I guess that is what I’m in for from here on out…

Still, it wasn’t a terrible day by any stretch. I woke up with the best birthday present I could have asked for, having our 6:45 AM flight from Bangalore to Jaipur delayed until 11:00 days in advance (I still have no idea how this happened). I would love to think that my Dad somehow orchestrated this, but since the flight number didn’t change, I’ll just have to chalk it up to the man above. Bangalore Airport has one treat inside its small domestic departure area, a bar/dosa stand that makes fine dosas, serves fine drinks for reasonable airport prices. Since it was too early to drink (even on my birthday), I got a large paper dosa which was excellent considering it was an airport. We arrived late to Bangalore airport, mainly because we left late and even with minimal traffic at 9:00 AM, it takes about an hour to reach the airport. Even though we were pressed for time and the monitor in the airport read ‘Boarding’ for our flight, we decided to take our time with dinner. That led to another birthday present, with the gate counter announcing over the loudspeaker that they would like “Mrs. Maryann Menezes and Mr. Daniel Menezes to please report to the gate immediately”, which was definitely a first for me. Late for flights: another adult experience on a real adult birthday.

The flight was on IndiGo, India’s new leading Lo-cost airline and one of the airlines poised to take over from where Kingfisher and Air Sahara once were. The flight almost a complete facsimile of Air Asia’s low cost service except for one main difference: the Jaipur airport was not housed inside a large Costco-type warehouse. From the airport in Jaipur, we quickly found out that the cab we had ordered to pick us up wasn’t there, which forced us to roam outside and try to book another cab. This gave us our first experience with the Jaipur heat. Jaipur, and Rajasthan in general (the state that Jaipur is in) is located near the desert in northern India. Whenever we told anyone we were going there, the immediate response was that it was going to be really, really, really hot. And it was, but it was dry. I never really knew what dry heat really was because outside of places like Arizona, I’ve never really experienced it in the US. I finally realized what that meant, though, when after walking around waiting for a cab in 100 degree heat, I didn’t start sweating. I can now say that I am all for dry heat.

We reached our hotel, the Naila Bagh Palace, after a half our taxi ride. Our first impression was one of nervousness. Before I left on my trip, my family and I watched the movie Best Exotic Marigold Hotel together, and this place was basically the same hotel from afar. When we got closer in and walked around, we realized that this hotel was the best form of the half-done Marigold hotel, with a large foyer with old-style seating, vintage furniture and paintings of old Indian enlisted men. At the back was an elevated pool in front of an old verandah. Our room was large and stylish, with a little pillowed alcove and a large bathroom. It was a great little room, with an AC that worked a little too well (seriously, we were freezing at times during the night). The final touch to the hotel was a parade of peacocks that were meandering about the front lawn. Just a really nice spot in central Jaipur.

We didn’t have many plans for our first night in Jaipur, but one was to go for the Sound & Light Show at the Amer Fort & Palace outside of Jaipur. The show itself created a host of logistical problems, namely that everyone we asked (or each site we checked) gave a different time for the show. Some said 7:30, some said 7:00. We finally got some confirmation that the show was at 7:00 and so we decided to rest a bit at the hotel until 5 PM. We were then picked up and left for the Amer Palace, 12 km away from central Jaipur – and of course in India, a 12 km drive takes half an hour and gives a glimpse into every part of life in that particular Indian city.

There were some unfortunate turns where the cab driver, who was in cahoots with shopowners and random third-parties, led us to a weird shopping district and a messy, fly-ridden restaurant. Looking past that, we reached the Sound and Light Show area across the man-made lake in front of the palace which was up on the hill. It really is an idyllic setting, and with the sun slowly descending behind the Alavalli Hills, and with the rows of seats that we and the rest of the patrons to the show were sitting on, I could imagine this being a destination wedding – a really, really obscure destination – setting. I’ll never go through with it, but with the palace in the background, it really is beautiful.

The show started around 7:10, with absolutely no announcement on why it started late, and while the show started slowly in terms of the lights, as the night fully came upon us, the lights started in earnest, a mesmerizing symphony of yellow, green, blue and red. The ‘sound’ part of the show was very informative, as we were all given a winding history of the Kechuvar Dynasty, the part of the Rajput dynasty that settled in Amer in the 700’s and were centered there until moving to Jaipur under the rule of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh in the early 1700’s. The story was a little hard to keep up with as they kept throwing out names that all included the names ‘Maharaja’ and ‘Singh’ with many having the ‘Sawai’ respect title added. Still, the ‘light’ part of the show kept me interested and affixed to the show for the entire hour. Before I knew it, the show was over and the bright lights filling up the whole façade of the Amer Fort was reduced to just floodlights, preparing for the Hindi show at 8.

We left the Amer Palace and headed back to Jaipur central for dinner at Copper Chimney, an Indian mainstay restaurant known for its curries. The restaurant was decent, but slightly underwhelmed in delivering its goods, as the curries had far too little meat. Still, it was one of the few restaurants in Jaipur with meat and alcohol, so all was mostly good for my birthday dinner. I decided to have a ‘Mint Tulip’ instead of my usual Kingfisher (a beer that can incredibly not grow tired and old despite it being the only domestic beer served at 90% of Indian restaurants), and it was a great mixture of whiskey, lemon juice and mint. We reached back to the hotel late in the night around 10:30, and I decided to stay up a little in the verandah of the hotel and have another beer to cap off a low-key but fun Birthday, preparing myself for some serious forays into the hot Jaipur heat in the days to come.

About Me

I am a man who will go by the moniker dmstorm22, or StormyD, but not really StormyD. I'll talk about sports, mainly football, sometimes TV, sometimes other random things, sometimes even bring out some lists (a lot, lot, lot of lists). Enjoy.