Short Journeys: India (US Amazon)
Short Journeys: India (UK Amazon)
The overall product page is here.
From the book, here's an experience I had in Jaipur where things got a little hairy for a while :
Jaipur and I
Jaipur was a bit of an
awakening for me I guess as a backpacker. It all boils down to one strange day
that could have ended pretty badly for me but fortunately didn’t. At the Ever Green
there was a notice plastered on a wall in the restaurant advising people that
if someone should approach them asking them to buy gems and sell them overseas
for a small profit they should decline. I thought it was an interesting note as
I scoffed down my breakfast, but my main thought was basically ‘I wonder what
that’s about’.
Turned out I would
soon discover. I had seen a bit of the town on my first day in Jaipur, and on
my second I had a few things to do – principally to get an overnight train ticket
to my next destination, which was Udaipur, and to send a parcel home.
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| Lake near Jaipur. |
Getting the train
ticket was easy enough, although it was my first real experience of standing in
a queue to buy something in India. I stood back from the person in front of me,
relieved that there was only one person in the line between the ticket window
and myself, and from nowhere as I stepped forward after they were done, a guy
basically ran in and pushed in when I was within half a step on the window!
I kid ye not – this
does happen in India. Regularly. You’ll have to decide how you want to deal
with it but when there are many people in a line it is just a huge group of
people jostling like a crowd. It’s not just India, but the sub-continent is
where it happens most and with the biggest numbers (although places in China
are pretty bad too). It’s a cultural thing really, perhaps a strange defence of
the behaviour, but with so many people it becomes a case of ‘if I don’t push
in, everyone else will and I will never get my ticket’. And that’s the long and
short of it. Play the game or don’t, it’s up to you. Just be aware that getting
angry and self-righteous never EVER won a fight in India.
So to be honest at
this point I was just ‘Ummm excuse me, but I was here first and you appear to,
probably by accident not realising someone was here and all, just jumped in
front and….’ or something to that effect. Or lack of. Yes, pretty poor form but
I was still the small fish in the big pond that is India and today I would have
pushed and glared. When I have stood up for myself, I seem to have been able to
out stare them and win the day.
Once I had my ticket
in the sleeper I headed to the nearby post office to ready my parcel and send
it home to Australia. Well, it was another chaotic scene in the post office
with crowds of people clamouring to get to the counter and I probably wasn’t
feeling all too keen to dive in. When I got the customs form I had to take it
away and write the details and then I would have to fight my way back to the
front to actually have the thing posted.
So I took the parcel
away to a bench where I started to fill out all the information. It wasn’t huge
but was a little bulky. A guy came up to me and offered to help, and I didn’t
have the smarts at this stage to say ‘I’m right thanks’. He helped me get a
really professional job done on the parcel, he took me to a counter where the
parcel was sewn into a hessian bag, and then was sealed with wax. The customs
form had to go to one window to be approved and then to another to post. He
managed to get it done very quickly as if my parcel was top priority.
I was very thankful to
be honest and in the end the parcel made it to Australia with no issues. He
then invited me to his house for a something to eat and I agreed and hopped on
a rickshaw. I was taken to a pretty nice house maybe fifteen minutes or so from
the station. I sat down outside in a courtyard area and chatted away to my new
friend and his pal about – well me mostly. They gave me a bottle of Coke and I
drank.
Somehow the
conversation turned to gems. They were mining gems. I had unwittingly told them
the next destination for me after India would be Europe. They started saying
that I could buy some gems from them at a very low price and then sell them
when I got to Europe and make a lot of money. Uh-oh… THAT was what the sign at
the hotel was going on about! So now I had to extricate myself from the
situation as best I could.
They were quite
insistent and turned a little aggressive. They were offering me an easy way to
make money so what was wrong with me not wanting to take a swag of gems with me
to Europe to sell? I just kept saying ‘no’ but was starting to worry they
weren’t going to let me go to be honest! Eventually, after more than half an
hour of insisting, they let me go without any gems. Although they asked me to
pay for the Coke!
 |
| Rickshaw speeding along. |
They signalled a
rickshaw and it took me back to the station area. I had probably made up a
story about meeting someone there which is why they let me go. I didn’t want to
tell them which hotel I was staying in as they would know where to find me and
I suspect would have turned up at some point to at the very least pester me. I
got off the rickshaw and paid and my ‘friend’ got off too. I then went the
longest way possible back to the Ever Green to make sure I wasn’t followed.
And so I began to
learn about the difficulties travellers can face occasionally in India. You can
trust SO many people India, really. I dropped my wallet at Delhi station and
someone picked it up and ran after me to give it back. But there are those who
will prey on travellers if you let them. You can sense it usually – they are
too friendly, they make up unlikely stories, they ask you to take gems with you
for a price. Odds are anyone out for some sort of scam will speak excellent
English and be somewhat slimy and overtly polite in their approach. Use your
instincts, you should be fine!
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