Expanding MyComfort Zone on the Indian Railway

Not many families in India have air conditioning, or at least not in Jodhpur. For the most part the Indians use fans and then also these giant coolers that force hot air through water to cool it down before blowing it into a room. They work pretty well as long as they have water in them, but the water dries up after a couple hours or so. So far Deva as been the one to make sure my cooler is always full of water before I go to sleep at night, but if I spend much time during the day in my room the cooler dries out and then I just sweat a bunch. Today, as I was sitting on my bed completely drenched, I realized that I could probably figure out how to fill the cooler up myself (I mean, it's only been what, 3 weeks?). I got out on the balcony, ready to apply all my super engineering lab experience and saw that it was super obvious. The hose was already inserted into the water holding tank. All I had to do was turn on the knob. When I turned around to come back inside, I saw that the family across the street was out on their balcony laughing at me. I gave a little wave.

This past weekend the other interns and I ventured to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan! We left Friday night for a 6 hour overnight train ride. We decided to save a little cash and go for the 320 Rs. round trip non AC sleeper car. I thought there might be sheets or something, but instead we just spread out on vinyl covered bunks, three to a wall. On our first day we visited the Hawa Mahal (Wind Palace), which was the Jaipur Maharaja's Playboy Mansion. He was the only man allowed inside, aside from the castrated Eunuchs who had to wheel the royal wives and concubines around (they were wearing too much jewelry to walk up stairs comfortably). Next we went to a collection of giant astronomical tools and sundials built by a Maharaja who was particularly into astronomy. The tools calculate the exact time and the exact position of the sun within the zodiac. Hinduism uses astrology to name babies and also to determine auspicious dates for things like weddings. We were all exhausted but we continued on to the City Palace, where the current Maharaja still lives. The museum part that we could see had cool garment and artillery exhibits. One Maharaja was 7 ft tall and 450 lbs, and they still had his old robe and a pair of his pants! Then we ate a lot of lunch, I took a nap, and we ate the most expensive meal I have had yet. Pizza Hut was 300 Rs. a person! Ridiculous.

Day 2 we had planned to wake up super early and climb a temple, but since everyone had only gotten about 4 hours of sleep on the train and we didn't get to bed until around one, we weren't travel ready until about eleven and it was already 105 degrees or something. We grabbed some rickshaws and headed up to Amber Fort. Ruins from the 10th century are visible behind the current fort, which was built in the 15th century. Unfortunately, most of the young male tourists seemed more interested in following our group around than enjoying the fort. I don't mind taking pictures with families or kids, but it is really uncomfortable to be learning how the Maharaja would meet with his concubines in this room and be given spoonfuls of wine before making glory (?? what does that mean?? I was too scared to inquire further), and then notice that four or five different cameras are pointed at you and your other blonde friend. At first we just tried to ignore them, but after some guy was videotaping Rachel for about 2 minutes straight we got a little more forceful. The Indian American interns were telling us that our ideas of politeness don't apply here, and that we should be just as rude as we need to to make them stop.

Next we took a jeep to the largest cannon in the world (only fired once, just for practice), I got some ice cream for myself and bananas for the group, and then we went to the Sun Temple. The Sun Temple is up on a mountain where wild monkeys also like to have shenanigans. We chilled up there for about an hour and a half and we saw monkey families, monkey wrestling matches, monkeys not caring about our existence, and we also saw the temple caretaker's toddler daughter get totally owned by a rogue monkey. We ate another expensive and leisurely dinner at a Chinese place (but no lunch besides bananas and roadside fried goods, so the cost was okay). We raced to the train station but it was delayed (surprise!). We didn't leave until 1am or so, but every seat on the train had three or four different numbers on it so no one knew where to sit. No one as in no one on the entire train. Kind of chaotic, but so Indian, which is why I came, so I tried to keep calm. We got into Jodhpur again around 7am. I decided to take the day off and I slept from 7:30 to 1:30. Longest nap ever!

Having hindi speaking interns made this trip so much easier. I'm really curious about what would have happened if we had tried to go without them. I'm thinking that we would have paid a lot more to do fewer things with so much more confusion! I think another intern and I might head to the Taj Mahal soon, maybe by ourselves without any hindi speaking crutch, and that might be quite a bit more adventurous.

Indian ice cream is the best. More specifically, this frozen milky dessert very similar to ice cream called kulfi is the best. It's kind of chunky and you can get it in the best flavors, like pistachio, or chowpati, or cardamom dessert flavored. I need to start making a bigger effort to eat it b/c I don't think I'll be able to get it outside of India.