India Pt 4

The train from Jaisalmer to Ajmer was relatively uneventful, but the arrival in Ajmer was quite jarring, not because of the train, but because of the horrorshow outside. Humans piled on top of one another trying to get off the train, and the red clad porters try to walk off with your bags and bring them to taxis run by their mates, taxi drivers compete with one another for fares, and more people try to get on to trains than trains can safely allow. No one bats an eye but us. It's the craziest I have ever seen a train station and I am sure it gets worse in bigger cities. It takes us ages to figure out how to get out of the station, every gate is locked and door is closed. We finally find a muddy path leading to a parking lot, and then another muddy path leading through another parking lot, which seems to lead to the entrance to the station. We must have gone the wrong way as we got off the train, but I couldn't see another way. Regardless, we trudge on trying to find the fixed rate taxis when we walk past a man asleep on the ground. The man is missing a foot and half his fingers on one hand, and he is, on closer inspection, covered with flies. Is he that drunk that he's passed out at the mouth of the train station and doesn't even notice that he's playing host to dozens of these little black pests? Even at my most seriously passed out, I'd have noticed that eventually and tried instinctively to brush them away, but this man doesn't move, doesn't even twitch. His hands and face are covered with sores that the flies are congregating around. I remember a bird or other small animal had got trapped in the attic of our old house, and had died. As it decomposed, big blue-black flies started showing up around the house. I must have bashed dozens of them, until there were no more, and these flies were very reminiscent of those flies. We wonder if the man has died? Why has no one tried to help him? If he has died, why had no one moved him? We keep walking, wondering then why we have done nothing as well. My first thought is that if no one else has helped him, I am most certainly not. I suppose I am just another western dickhead who thinks he's too good, too clean to touch this man. Maybe so, but I simply wasn't going to, and I made peace with that. That thought makes me uncomfortable to think about it now, but at the time... We find a taxi to take us the half hour to Pushkar, which is situated by what I am told is a lovely little lake with bathing gats all the way around it, scads of temples throughout the town, and overall, just a very cool and relaxed vibe about the place, a sort of backpacker haven. What I see is another filthy, hectic town full of tourists and hawkers, cars and motorcycles, cows and dogs. Siobhan assures me that when she was here last, it was no where near as bad as this. The traffic has doubled, the garbage has spawned more garbage, and the rain just put a grey, muddy wash over everything. We thought that this being monsoon, low season for tourists, we could just wander into town and have our pick of places to stay. Siobhan had been in contact with a relatively expensive place the night before, but we opted to take our chances when the owner said he'd send a taxi to get us from the station for the bargain rate of 500 rupees. That's not actually a bargain, incidentally. It cost us 300. That's where our luck ran out. There's literally no room at the inn. Crap. So we contact the hotel we'd passed on earlier, and they said they'd come get us from the restaurant we called from, now that we are in town. How nice. What he meant was he'd send someone to show the taxi driver how to get there. Whatever. We get to the hotel, which is a real haveli (not hovel), and it's surprisingly really lovely. That was as good as it got. The power kept going out, it was nowhere near anything, except conveniently a taxi stand to get us out of there. We spend the rest of the day deciding on whether to carry on to Udaipur because we are just being too hard on India and it will get better, or to get to Delhi as fast as we can because we are concerned that if places like Jaisalmer and Pushkar have gone to hell, what are the chances that Siobhan's second favourite place in India has not gone to hell too? Finally Siobhan decides she'd rather remember her favourite places like Udaipur, Darjeeling and Orchha as they were and so we make the decision to leave India after just 6 days and book a flight from Delhi back to Bangkok, leaving in 4 days time. We decide to go for dinner in the hotel's rooftop restaurant. We place our relatively simple orders and wait. My relatively simple drink of soda water and lime juice is naturally quite wrong. They didn't actually bother with the lime. OK, can I get some lime for this like I will doubtless be charged for? A tall glass with half a teaspoon of lemon juice arrives by the hand of the surliest staff member who slings the glass down loudly and sulks off. This is a joke, right? OK, I don't really care that much, just bring our food and we'll stop inconveniencing you. My food and Siobhan's food shows up, but where is my son's food? I am assured it's in the oven and will only be another minute. 20 minutes later I have fed my son half of my dinner and I am still waiting for his food. I realise he hasn't even put it in the oven. I have never been so angry so frequently in one country before. Everything is wrong or falling apart or disease ridden and the only ones who have noticed are us. I tell the cook that I'm really pissed off about this, and he should put the food in the fridge and heat it up for my boy tomorrow. I then go downstairs to tell the manager/ owner about this nonsense. He actually has the nerve to tell me that they have to make it from scratch so it takes a while. Could no one tell me this when I said the food was for a little boy? I should mention the food in question was pizza. How long does it take to make pizza, even from scratch? 20 minutes? Half an hour? I have worked in pizza restaurants in my life, and 40 minutes was unforgivable. So an hour? I told him that his excuse was crap and he knew it. He was the one who told me it would only be another minute and knew it hadn't even been put in the oven. Raging now, but it's bedtime. We decide we've genuinely had enough of Pushcar and it's time to go. In the morning we ask the owner if he could arrange train tickets for us, and I won't go into details about the different schedules for paying for tickets, it's a little complicated, but we asked that he use the tourist rates to ensure that we get on the train. He assures me that the new software his contact is using will ensure 100 percent cerainty that we will get the tickets, but it will cost more. Of bloody course it will. Fine. We are told how much more. I choke. I pay. Out of curiosity we check the train website to see how much they actually cost. A red mist of rage descends. We have been ripped of to the tune of 2700 rupees. This will not do. I storm out and demand our money back and tear an enormous strip off him, calling him a thief and criminal, and that's the repeatable words. He first tries to tell me that they charge commission for services like this. I am prepared to pay comission, but not 200% commission. I rip in again, and I won't say the words used, but they were indeed salty. He says he'll let me take the amount he cheated out of us, and use it to pay for the room. I should mention he wanted 2000 rupees for the room, but we turned to leave so he charged us 1500. Still too much for the room, but we were out of options at the time. Anyway, we get everything square but I am just raging angry and I still have a few choice words for him. We leave and go across the street to the taxi service and arrange a taxi to Ajmer to get on the train to take us to Delhi. On the way to Ajmer I find out why the owner of the hotel wanted to settle with us so quickly. As I check the tickets, Siobhan notices that we were charged for the general rate, not the tourist rate, so as a parting gift we were ripped off of a further 500 rupees. We briefly debate turning the car around so I can go turn the thieving bastard upside down and pull the money out via his arsehole, but it's too late. We won't make the train if I go kill him. I am growing to truly hate India. It's not a full blown hate yet, but it's getting there, and it wastes no time in filling that hate gap for me. Another overnight train, this time direct to Agra and the Taj Mahal.