My Adventures in the Pink City - #HypedHolidays - Part 1

Every year, we as a family voluntarily agree to partake in a migration activity to an external environment so we can take our disagreements about our likes, dislikes, the individual lifestyle choices we’ve made and comment on the fellow member’s preferences on food, clothing, music, etc to a different location and have a little fun in between. But this arrangement of choosing to put ourselves in the outside world is a little weird and tough to explain to your boss when you apply for a leave or to your teacher in the leave letter and the friends don’t get it. So, we just call it ‘vacation’.

And this said vacation is generally taken with a pair of favorite cousins and family who are equally excited about the ‘forgot to pack that dress’ and ‘didn’t charge the phone’ fights that are to ensue. 

So, as we ran to get boarding for our fight, sorry flight, hauling enough luggage to fit all the supplies of a royal family, I’m sure the airport staff saw us as a contingent of the royal servants. Which was fitting I guess because that year we were going to Rajasthan and we were that poster annoying joint family on vacation. Two dads yelling,

“Everybody get your ID out.”

“Count the luggage and hurry up.”

“No, you can’t bring in your backpack as hand luggage.”

Two moms reporting to the dads and occasionally asking them to chill it. Four kids (another thing with this joint traveling thing, anybody who is the next generation, no matter what age, is referred to as a kid through the course of the trip.) making their plans for the holiday that had little do with mahals and mandirs and more in the lines of hotel suites and free snacks. And then there is grandma, who is right in the middle of all this, silently counting cash and securing her debit cards to hand it over everywhere before anybody else has a chance to. If we were a unit of royal servants, she could pass for royalty.  

The first thing we did as soon as we checked into the hotel was open that Lays packet in the snack bar. Okay might not be the first thing but somewhere after I made small talk with the kind white lady in the next door and in a fit of great defense against my home city, confirmed what she heard about Hyderabad being a great tourist experience to be absolutely true, not that there was much to see in there but if she wants to get stuck in traffic on the way to Charminar and learn some Urdu curse words who am I to stop her? That’s an experience too. 

Soon after, chilling out in the room for a while which is just us jumping up and down on the springy beds we head out to see the actual pink city, Old Jaipur, rest of the city is pretty much multicolored or normally colored, whatever. The whole vibe of the city is so pretty. It’s old and lined up with shops selling local crafts and clothes. Yeah, I like going to old places and forts, so I can touch all those walls and stuff and pretend to be Indiana Jones. As soon as we were done clicking some cliched family pictures in front of the Hawa Mahal, we break for lunch and eat the authentic Rajasthani food, with big plates and all and were gearing up to go raid all those shops we zeroed in, on the way but were stopped by the dad squad, who were now helpfully broadcasting the time on their watches, just in case we didn’t know. 

“We’re getting late.”

“Late for what? We’re on a holiday!”

“Amer fort.” 

Got played on my weakness dammit! Yeah, we had to go to the Amer fort but we all saw that in Jodha Akbar! And what we didn’t get to see there were these cute handcrafted shoes with golden glitter and books made of pure hand made paper. But before we could offer some firm resistance, we were hauled towards the car and hit by the most cliched line, “There’ll be more shops on the way or we can come back later.” 

“Haan Ji madam ji.”, the driver echoed his approval to that reasoning. 

Now, pro tip when the men and the drivers say stuff like “Rasthe mein aur shops milenge” or “There’ll be more shops on the way”, don’t trust them, they’re wrong. I mean they might be right, but no they are not. The men just want to put off shopping for as long as possible and eventually just casually avoid it altogether. And the drivers are just trying to suck up to the dad squad because... I honestly don’t know why, is it a guy thing or do they just suck up to whoever’s paying? They also smell our innocent touristic curiosity and do us little favors like recommend that tour guide who’s been there since the place was built (who is really his brother who memorized ‘The History of Jaipur and Places to visit there: A complete tour book’) and that restaurant that was built hundred years ago by the descendants of the head Rajput cook ( really owned by his father in law who started it ten years ago and painted the place yellow so it looks old).

Anyway, by the time we were in Amer, we’d effectively forgotten about the shopping and were excitedly bickering about the little tidbits we picked up about the place. But when we got there and took in the whole view of the palace, no google image matches up.

It. Is. Amazing.

Swept up in the whole vibe and the royalty we are just walking behind the guide and clicking pictures, normally I’m not really a picture person but even I knew it was stupid to not get pictures of this place. 

Three hours later, we walked out of an exit that was probably five kilometers from our entrance, but our driver (god bless drivers, sometimes they’re suck-ups, but god bless them) was already there with the car. Now, I know why Aishwarya Rai was sad for the most part in Jodha Akbar, even I would be, if you made me walk that every day. On our way to the hotel, we were all so tired and exhausted that forget shopping, we couldn’t even turn and look at all those shops we were passing by and feel sad, all we needed was just a lot of food and a lot of sleep. Soon after cleaning up and changing into pajamas, we were a pack of hungry wolves headed towards the buffet. But somewhere in my gut, there was a queasy feeling, which I quickly chalked up to as hunger, but turns out it was my intuition telling me we were not going to get food here because the theme for the dinner buffet was ‘Continental Specials’ and that is the worst thing that can happen to a hungry, tired vegetarian. And I could bet on anything even before we were handed the menu that there would not be more than one vegetarian dish in the whole buffet. And sure enough, there is a small bowl of veg noodles in the corner, which was obviously not going to cut it, and seeing the kind of day we just had, we could all eat a bowl of noodles ‘each’. So, we decided to hit the road and hunt us some vegetarian prey, it was pretty late in the night and most of the good restaurants were shutting down and we didn’t have a car to go anywhere far. We walked, passing by shops that were getting ready to close, zigzagged through parked vehicles, and we stopped at a cross-section and took a random right, so we didn’t really know where we were going. It’s like a treasure hunt with no clues and the treasure being food. There were some roadside Chinese stands still cooking and some crowd around the paani puri stall, but the mom squad and the dad squad were most likely to beat us up in the middle of the road if any of us suggested them for dinner so the mature kids we were, we shut up and keep walking. Moreover, we were actually starting to enjoy the walk, we were all talking about how the day went and cracking jokes about the other tourists we met along the way. Whoever said, “If you want to see and explore the real city, go out at night.”, was right (If nobody said it, I’m saying it and I’m right). Finally, our little treasure hunt/midnight stroll got us to a small, inexpensive ripoff of Saravana Bhavan ( a famous Tamilian restaurant chain) and soon we were inhaling the familiar scents of dosa and pickle and food and South India. There’s something extremely exciting about finding and eating your staple food in another place, so we were excitedly giving out our order and my cousins, who were from Chennai were trying to talk to the guy in Tamil and I think we freaked him out a little with our enthusiasm. By the time our food arrived, we had significantly quietened and we break our silence only to silently joke about a pair of girls in the corner who were way too overdressed for this place, way too overdressed for any place that isn’t the Lakme fashion parade if I'm being honest. Anyway, sitting around a plastic table, in pajamas, ditching the five-star buffet, eating dosa on that quiet summer night, we were having the best meal in Jaipur and we just knew right away that this was serious ‘that night in Jaipur’ anecdote material and it was only the first day.

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#holidayhype    #mahals and mandirs    #travel stories    #JodhaAkbar    #Dosa    #hunting for food

Sorry for doing this guys, but you gotta do what youu gotta do, if that means clickbaits, so be it.

Where did I go next? You absolutely will not believe what happened when I went to.....

Find out in the #HypedHolidays Part 2