Just Another Day on the Road in India: Jaipur to Nawalgarh

January 2016

Our roof-top restaurant in Jaipur

In mid-January 2016 we traveled from Jaipur, Rajasthan, to Nawalgarh, a town of around100,000 just north and slightly east of Jaipur, in the Shekhawati region.  We got up on the early side (at 5:30 am) for a morning train.  Had an uneventful breakfast at the rooftop restaurant of our Jaipur hotel, the Kalyan.  As usual the waiter who does not write our order down got it wrong, but as the literacy rate in Rajasthan is among the lowest in India, this is hardly surprising.  He undoubtedly can't read or write, and it's wonderful that he has learned enough English (and likely French, as many French travellers refuse to speak English, so speak to servers everywhere in the world in French, and expect to be understood) to serve us at all. 

 

We had checked out of the hotel the night before as this procedure can often be complicated, especially if you are paying by credit card, which in this case we did.  So, out the door with our bags to find no auto-rickshaws or drivers hanging about waiting to pounce on us - 'Jaipur helicopter madam?' 'Where going?' 'Very cheap rates madam!'  (Why do they always address the women?  Do they figure we're a softer touch, less likely to walk?)  Doug goes off up the street to look for one.  Five minutes later, when he's not back, I decide to follow, glad that we travel with bags on wheels, and even gladder that this hotel is on a paved road.  Caught up with him at the intersection of a busy road, where he's got a tuk-tuk (auto-rickshaw) driver and we cram ourselves and our bags in and head for the station.  We pay at least twice the going rate for a short ride simply because we're foreigners and a captive audience - clearly we need to get to the station.  When it comes to extracting money from foreigners, even the least educated Indian is smart.

A particularly beautiful auto-rickshaw, or tuk-tuk, as well call them, for the sound of their motors

 

At the train station ticket booth I deal with a surly ticket agent who gives me a ticket for a train to Sikar, leaving at 10:00, after making it clear that there is no train to Nawalgarh (never mind that the Indian Western Railyways website says there is one, at 10:10).  The ticket says (in Hindi and English, thank goodness - the rail tickets are easy to read at least) leaves from platform 6.  As we're still confused about whether or not we're on the right train, and where platfor 6 is, I decide to try asking the Station Manager.  There are three men (almost no women work in Rajasthan - they are kept at home by tradition, custom, continuing backwardness, and their husbands) in the Station Manager's office.  They are too busy talking to one another to talk to me.  This is usual.  In India, one has to butt in to conversations.  Still I wait politely - I am after all, Canadian.  

Finally one of the men deigns to look at me.  I ask about the train - yes, there is no train to Nawalgarh.  The line is under construction.  We must go to Sikar.  The fellow then suggests I go back to the place where I bought the ticket, get a refund, and go to Nawalgarh by bus.  I reply that we like the train (partly because it's so much safer than Indian buses, but also because it's easier to see the countryside, and often less crowded and more comfortable).  He shrugs.  We move on to the question of where platform 6 is and where the 'lift'(elevator) is so we can go up and over the tracks to get there.  'You don't need a lift,' he says.  'Yes,' I said, 'we do. We have two bags.'  'No, no lift.  Just go straight.  Ask anyone for the meter gauge track.'  This last actually came out as:  'Nonolife. Jusgostreet.  Askeenyone for the meetrguagetrack.'  Say it as fast as you can, with an Indian accent, and slur all of the words into one and you might be close.  Fortunately I am getting used to Hinglish and was able to interpret. 

 

We started walking.  We got to the end of the railway station and saw a sign with an arrow pointing right, to platforms 6 and 7.  It wasn't super clear, so I stopped and showed our tickets to a well-dressed fellow who looked like he might be able to help.  He looked at the ticket, waved his hand in the direction of two tracks, said 'that is platform 6', and then promptly dismissed me by turning his back and walking away.  Typical behaviour of a government worker.  They have no time to shilly-shally.  He needed to go pee on a wall, or watch someone else who was actually working.... .

 

We find a train, and confirm it's the right one by asking a woman who is sitting in it with her two kids, 'Sikar?'  She nods yes.  We get on, squeezing ourselves and our bags through the impossibly narrow entry to the car.  It's an old, dirty wooden-benched affair arranged in six sets of two benches facing one another.  We look for the least dirty benches - all of them have the detritus of several previous journeys on the floor.  Indians love snacks, all of which come in wrappers or little plates or cups, and all of these are thrown, if not out the window of the train, onto the floor.  There is also a generous layer of sunflower seed and peanut shells.  We find one set of benches that's relatively litter-free and put our bags up on the racks above the benches. 

 

Even my desperado look doesn't deter the oglers 

No sooner have we sat down than we are joined by three young Indian men.  They choose to sit with us because they want the proximity to foreigners, and especially to foreign women.  They are fascinated, and do not even try to hide their inquisitive stares.  Doug suggests they go to other, free, seats.  No dice.  So, we up and move to another car, finding empty seats aplenty.  

In the end we are joined by a woman with two children who are going to an International School in Sikar where of course they are learning English.  (Any Indian family who can afford to send their children to a school such as this does so, with the hope that their kids will get themselves, and eventually their entire families, out of this country.)  A well-dressed and polite young man also joins us.  He is not an ogler (not ALL of them are, just most). 

At the first stop, just a few minutes from Jaipur, hundreds of people, all with myriad bags and bundles, are waiting to get on.  Our benches fill up.  People are standing in the aisle.  An older sari-clad woman (almost all women in Rajasthan are still wearing saris, which is colourful and nice to see, but also a mark of the continuing grip of tradition on women here - the men have long since discarded traditional dress in favour of jeans and western shirts) who is standing in the aisle gestures towards Douglas, at the window seat furthest away from where she is, and indicates that she thinks he should get up and give her his seat.  Never mind that there are three younger Indian men in seats closer to her.  I wobble my head in the distinctly Indian way to say 'yes, no maybe, I don't understand' and point to the other men.  

One of the young men finally gets up and gives her a seat.  (Indian men, especially young Indian men, do not generally show respect for older women - or any women - or disabled people, or really anyone in this kind of situation - they've been raised as little princes and see themselves as above everyone else.)   She sits down and offers the rest of us a huge satisfied smile.  The little boy on my right edges carefully closer to me - I move my pack onto my lap to make more room, and get my camera out to show him some photos of elephants I've taken in Jaipur.  His sister, on his right, leans over to watch.  We 'talk' in limited English.  He borrows his mother's cell phone and shows me photos of their school in Sikar, his baby sister, and some very fancy cars that he obviously loves.

 

The ride through the countryside is lovely.  The train is surprisingly smooth for a meter guage (narrow gauge) track, which are often in poor repair.  We speed through miles of cultivated fields, their bright green crops contrasting sharply with the dull grey-brown of the adjacent unirrigated patches of scrub land.  Water makes such a difference!  At one point we see a brilliant blue bird that we haven't seen before.  When he comes to light on a tree branch, he appears brown with no trace of his brilliance.  We later learn that he is an Indian roller bird.  We also see another bird, black and white with a white collar, a red eye, and long yellow legs, that we haven't seen before.  We later learn it's a red wattled lapwing.  And we see several small herds of wild (and protected) nilgai, or 'blue bulls'.  These are big horse-sized animals rather like cows, with short horns and small heads.  And of course we see the usual herds of goats, big black Brahma cows and a few horses, sheep, pigs, etc.  We also see a pack of dogs chasing down a herd of sheep, and another lone dog who's evidently been successful and is tearing at the hind end of a goat.  Packs of wild dogs are common in India, in both rural and urban areas, and many children, as well as animals, are killed by them.  But to date Indian governments at all levels have been unwilling to take action to rid India of this scourge.  The Hindu belief in all creatures having a right to life, and an equal belief in 'karma', which can be used to 'explain' the death, say, of a child killed by a dog ('it was his karma') makes it unlikely that these packs of dogs will ever be dealt with.  They are part of what makes India, India (and 'Incredible India'!).

 

After about three hours we get to Sikar.  The station is lovely - not like the usual dirty, crumbling rural stations we've become accustomed to seeing.  This one is clean, white, and covered in beautiful murals.  Just like the old havelis (family mansions) we've come here to see.  I snap a few photos before we organize an auto-rickshaw to take us to the bus stand where we can catch a bus to Nawalgarh, about 28 km away.  

Throughout the ride the driver keeps trying to convince us to give him 800 rupees to drive us all the way to Nawalgarh.  We say 'no' in increasingly strong ways but he doesn't give up.  Even as we are getting down at the bus station he tries it again.  Here 'no' doesn't mean 'no' (and it's also a word, when it comes to women, that cannot be used towards men, as I learned at a fort in Jaipur, when I said 'no' to yet another guy trying to sell me some prints on fabric.  He told Doug I was 'a dangerous woman'!  Indeed!  I dared to say 'no' to a man!)

 

After paying too much at a roadside eatery for dahl and a couple of rotis (our white skin again resulting in exhorbitant (extortionist?) prices), we crossed the road to the bus stand.  There was a cement block wicket with the usual glassed and barred ticket window with only a small arched opening at the bottom through which one can speak to the ticket agent, pass money and receive tickets.  One guy was getting his tickets and another was waiting, but to the side, not behind, the first fellow.  I waited behind the first fellow, but nodded at the second, acknowledging that he came 'first'.  But no matter, because the ticket agent's computer printer was jammed, and all three people in the little concrete box were trying to fix it.  None of them paid the least attention to us.  The fellow and I waited patiently - what else can you do?  But not a bulky older woman who came up behind me, crushing me into the wicket, and thrusting her arm, with a fist-full of money, towards the ticket window.  I wiggled so that my back-pack was squarely between me and her, and indicated that I was waiting, and after the young fellow, was next in line.  In India, none of this matters.  One pushes and shoves and tries to get infront of whoever is infront of the line.  It 's not personal, and not rude; it's just the way it is.  Never mind the signs about queues (here Qs).  Queues went out with the British - and good riddance to them.  When finally the printer was fixed, and the young fellow had his tickets, and the woman behind me was fairly crushing me breathless, the guy behind the booth told me I should get my ticket on the bus.  (Just minutes before, when Doug went to another wicket to ask, he was told I was at the right wicket.... ah, India!)

 

We look at the bus, an impossibly old, and even more impossibly crowded wreck, and decide there's no way we, and our bags, can get on (but several more people with bags and bundles will get on, whenever and wherever the bus stops).  We wait for the next one.  It is also crowded, but we do manage to get on, and I get a seat.  Doug puts his suitcase on a seat, but as the bus fills up he is pushed further and further to the back until he is unable to reach the seat.  Finally he climbs up and over the seats to insert himself into the seat, moving the bag to the floor.  The bus is packed to the gills - and then some.  But there are no animals on the bus.  And off we go.

 

Incredibly more people get on as we head out of town.  We rattle and lurch along.  I am glad I can't see the road ahead as the bus overtakes lorries, auto-rickshaws, bullock-carts, etc.  I am also glad this will be a short ride.  The fellow on my left, next to the window, buys a bunch of peanuts in the shell when we stop - they are passed to him through the window in a newspaper cone.  He is munching contentedly on them, dropping the shells on the floor (of course), when without warning there is a loud bang and the window beside him explodes in a shower of fragments.  He is visibly upset, and keeps feeling his face and head to make sure he's not bleeding (he's not).  Apart from a few people right next to us, no one else takes notice, including the ticket taker, who by this point had, incredibly, made his way down the mackerel-packed aisle to our seats.  He took no notice at all.  I offered to look at the guy's face and head and reassured him that there were no cuts.  He shook the glass shards off his jacket and pants, and then calmly picked the remaining sharp bits of glass out of the window frame and dropped them on the road as the bus charged on.  (I couldn't help thinking what would have happened if the same even had occurred on a bus in Canada... .)

 

Within minutes of the shattered window event, a fight broke out between the ticket taker and a young male passenger who was standing right beside my seat.  He was being pushed into my seat, back-pack first, and I yelled out 'hey-hey' (what is 'cut it out' in Hindi?) to get some attention.  Then everyone around the pair of contestants started yelling and gesticulating and talking about the foreign 'lady' (evidently they felt that more care should be taken regarding my safety, although why I don't know).  Within a few minutes things were sorted out, the guy paid up (that seemed to be the issue), and we continued to roll on.

 

We got to the 'bus station' in Nawalgarh.  This was/is a big dirt lot with an impressive decorated cement archway entrance but nothing else.  We had arrived.  And now we are leaving!

 

India is somewhere that has to be experienced to be believed.  

It is not an experience I would recommend to the faint of heart, to those who have a tendency to feel sorry for the poor, the infirm, the sick, or the oppressed, to those who have an aversion to dirt, grime and filth (especially shit of all origins), or to those who feel claustrophobic in crowded situations.  

Fortunately there is much that is interesting, and much that is beautiful - if one can look beyond the rest.  And fortunately, we can!