Today was busy. We left Delhi at 6:50 a.m. There were 6 new people on the Truck, two guys from Scotland, 1 Canadian gir from Halifax who is currently living and working in England, 3 Engish - 2 girls and one chap Dave - and Eugene from Australia. It seems an easy transition and I hope they are feeling as positive as I am.
We stopped first to pick up Zoe, Dan's mate, and our tour leader, who has just flown in from England after having the last 2 weeks off for a wedding in Italy. Dan is doing all the driving on this leg. Shortly after that we stopped for chai and Zoe changed into "Truck clothes"! We had one other stop for coffee before arriving in Jaipur. The roads were unbelievably busy - so many trucks and going through the toll booths took anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes. The country side was non-descript and time was passed chatting and snoozing.
Jaipur (population 3.5 million), also known as the Pink City, was founded in 1727 and is the capital of Rajasthan. It is packed with people, transportatino, and markets. It is dirty and untidy, but somehow we are becoming used to the haos of Indian towns and beginning to find the character in them. People love to wave at us and call out to us as we pass through the narrow over-crowded streets. There are all sorts of smells, nasty sewage smells, fresh fruit smells, and the sweet smells of the fres and tidy inhabitants. There are elephants in the street, cows idly wandering arund stopping traffice from time to time, goats mixing in with the people, camel drawn carts, horse drawn carts, donkey carts and the whole scene is frenetic and mesmerizing.
Our first stop was Amber Fort. This was a beatiful fort and palace which is built in reddish pink and is representative of the finest Rajput architecture. Building started in 1592. After that we saw the lake and the deserted palace in the lake. Aopparentl, a private enterprise is in the process of putting a causeway over to the lake and developing it into something new. After that we visited a cooperatie where we saw carpet and fabric being made using the traditional methods of 250 years ago. Unfortunately, there was the inevitable "sell" job and although interesting, I did feel that this was an inappropriate activity for an overland truck group.We checked into our hotel around 7:00 p.m., freshened up, met for drinks and dinner around 8 p.m. and finally sank into bed around 11 p.m.
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