Courtyard at Diggi’s

This morning, we take an auto-rickshaw to Jaipur’s main bazaar and our very persuasive driver Yogi offers us a trip local factory shops where we can buy textiles and craftwork. To help in the battle of wills he has a book full of hand-written English with things like “Yogi is a very trusty man. He gave us good tour… Love Mr & Mrs Smith. Enfield. UK”. There is clearly some lucky Indian somewhere who can write in “English”, absolutely churning these books out for all the rickshaw wallahs to purchase. In the end we agree to Yogi’s scheme but know he’ll be getting a cut somewhere.
First, we wander the Tripolia bazaar, hunting for somewhere for lunch, but settle in the end for two samosas and some milky sweets from a small shop. Turns out to be quite filling enough. At the factory, miles out of town, all the employees seem to have been waiting for us. A guy gives us a demo of block printing camels and then proceeds to show us in great length, a stack of different cloth in various jaunty designs, colours and qualities. The prices are inflated for tourists but still, fundamentally, cheap. We buy a few souvenir wall hangings and table cloths for people back home then get to try on sari’s and turbans for size. I feel like a lobotomy patient. We spend about £20 between us and the rickshaw driver looks pretty pleased with himself.
We return to sunbathe at the hotel, which is nice. For dinner we push the boat out and dine at the “Copper Chimney” probably the nicest restaurant we’ve been in and I chance the chicken tikka which turns out to be a good plan. Dining here brings out the extremes in our holiday. One moment we are mucking down with the locals on a bus trip costing pennies and the next we are in a restaurant like this rubbing shoulders with the upper-caste professional Hindis. The best thing is, the meal still only costs us about £5 for both of us. One of the reasons why travelling to countries like India is so much fun, is that you get to experience being either rich or poor by choice. Shameless exploitation of local people? Unfortunately, yes, but not all the time.
On the way home, it’s all hammered home again, with street children begging at us for money when we stop at traffic lights and the cycle-rickshaw wallah jabbering on about his three sick children and wife in hospital and how the price will be “as you like, sir”. He gets 20 Rs like everyone else. That’s just the way it is.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 1998 at 1:40 pm and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.