Jaipur and Bollywood

Two entries at the same time, roughly, in a row. Odd.

Woke up early, 5:45, packed, got ready, into rickshaws between 6:30 and 6:45. These were a little bigger, a little cushier, even had a baggage area – but we had to hold onto them with our hands. Train station, found the platform, found out the train left half an hour after we thought it did, sat around, Denny and I tried our damndest to find something for Swaffy to drink (sick), and the train showed up. We're getting on, we're getting on, it starts to move, I was the last of the mini-group I was in to get on, and I was literally jumping onto a (slowly) moving train. Thankfully the guy in front of me was helpful with my bag and all. My seat was an upper, so I sat on the lower like we did in Thailand. Tried to prop it up into a seat, but some briefcase or whatever was chained so I couldn't. I sat there for a while, had an omelette sandwich with ketchup, then eventually laid down, which turned out to be a mistake. See, that WAS someone's unattended bag and seat, actually some sort of train official I think, and me laying there and propping my feet on his bag was not so good. In retrospect I realize it really was my fault, but at the time I just couldn't figure out why he left his stuff there so long with no indication it was his, at all. Apparently in India, if you're in the upper, you sit in the upper too, you don't sit down below like Thailand. So he moved me from seat 6 to seat 37, another upper, on the same car, where I quietly sat and read on my computer and tried not to be trouble for anyone. Napped a bit on my backpack, and then there we were in Jaipur. Got off, which was a bit hectic as Denny told us to follow Abdul without any of us knowing who Abdul was, “guy in the green shirt” was much more helpful. We followed him out, he had cars ready for us, we ignored beggars (I really, really don't like that that's becoming a routine part of my entries), and off we went. Jaipur, the Pink City, is a bit more affluent than the other places we've been, less rundown, in better shape, less beggars and street hawkers. It's nice, actually. So we got to our hotel, had lunch while we waited for rooms to be ready, lunch took forever but my egg fried rice was delicious, and we got into our rooms. After that we decided to go out to a Bollywood movie. Well, either the directions David gave us were wrong or I mixed them up, because we ended up way way off track, at a different movie theater altogether. We got directions to the right theater there and kept walking, though we must have asked directions over a dozen times, mostly Clay confirming we were on the right path – which was a good thing, because sometimes we found out new information, though we were on the right path after that first big mistake. Got there, paid 100 rupee for an 80 rupee ticket because I didn't get change, and got into the movie 10 or 15 minutes late. I found out that a medium coke in an Indian movie theater is the opposite of a medium coke in an American movie theater – absurdly small, not absurdly large.

Watching a Bollywood film in India is... interesting. You're not watching a movie in a foreign language, just a movie in a mostly foreign language. Maybe 10-20% of the dialogue is in English, the rest not, no subtitles. So some parts made a lot more sense than others. The dance sequences were fun, though I was hoping for more of them, there were only really two. The movie was clearly funny, and some humor really is universal (slapstick, peeing humor, drunk humor – yes, related), while a lot of it, well, the theater around us was rolling in their seats. Got out of that, walked home in a much shorter period of time, and typed this up.

Friday, February 5th, roughly 6:40-50 PM local time