This week was a bit less incredible than last week but mainly because we have been moving to smaller cities Udaipur and Jodhpur. It gets easier for travellers as the cities get smaller…or maybe with time we just got immune to the noise and hassle and filtering out what we wanted to hear. Udaipur is a quaint city on the lake that gets really loads of tourists (strange because it does not have any world heritage sights like Delhi, Agra or Jaipur…). Jodhpur, the blue city at the footstep of the magnificent fort is slightly less crowded with tourists and seems to go around with its own life. In both cities tourists and locals seem to co-exist quite peacefully. We did not even have one scam attempt in neither!!! So this week’s blog is a continuation of my experiences and observations from India but maybe this time a bit less harsh than last week because things definitely got better!
There were no helicopters in Udaipur or Jodhpur!
In contrast to last week the tuk-tuk drivers only occasionally ask a question if you need a rickshaw and you can politely reply No and that’s the end of the conversation! Very surprising… We even started to smile when refusing the service because we knew no further hassle awaits! Udaipur actually is very easy to navigate on foot and is not crowded at all so the walks are a real pleasure! When we decided to take a tuk-tuk it just took us where we wanted to go with no unnecessary discussions. It Jodhpur it was bit crazy when the tuk-tuk drivers where fighting between themselves to ‘catch the foreign tourist’ which was quite a scary sight but our hotel sent their own tuk-tuk driver which spared us the hassle which I do not think I could fight after 6 hours on the Indian busJ So for any future traveller to India, I recommend reserving hotel in advance and asking for help with the pick-up.
Poland, Warsaw… my friend has been there…
I think this is a good time to say a few words about shopping in India… It truly incredible experience! Everywhere you walk the shopkeepers lure you to their doors… because once you enter you would not leave unless you buy something, regardless if you like it or not! They will make 1000 reasons why you should buy. The most popular are that you are buying something truly unique and getting the best deal, which is never the case cause a guy (rarely a woman) next door sells exactly the same staff and is likely to offer different price (of course there are no price tags whatsoever). Another more difficult one is that if you do not buy it would be bad luck for the shop cause you are the first customer of the day (regardless what time you come to the shop). So, until Udaipur I was only buying in the more expensive stuff (for India, not for the western pocket) in fixed price shops just to spare myself the hassle as I do not seem to be a good haggler, especially if somebody’s good luck depends on me buying something I do not need. Anyway, I do not regret the slightest that I have not been shopping with the quasi-artisans because buying really cheap trinket is really not helping anybody. Who can make money when you pay £2 for a pair of shoes? It is just approving the poverty status quo. Instead I bought a few nice clothes in the ethical, hassle-free, fixed price shop where you shop and nobody is taking to you until you have to try or pay. Luring customers to the shops is art on its own…. Sometimes it is just a hello, typically immediately followed by the question where you from. Once they find its Poland then the conversation is supposed to continue, again typically with a friend or cousin or neighbour who has been to Poland. One of them even had a polish wife… You would have thought that half of the India has some sort of connection to Poland. Incredible?... The best guy we met was telling me how his Indian painting school (that has a shop selling pictures) is going next week to Warsaw to hold an exhibition at Warsaw University. It takes a week of being in India to realise all of it is a made up lie, just to keep your attention. As long as you are talking to them there is a chance that you enter the shop and then you are lost! You just have to buy something. Again the concept that you JUST do not need or want something else is very hard to understand by the shopkeepers!
Again Udaipur was again different… The shopkeepers rarely go beyond hello and where you from and let you easily pass by when you show no interest. The most incredible thing happened when I went to buy something very specific. Our hotel had Rajastani style bed sheets in a hand-made block print. The hotel guy told us about the area of town where to buy it slightly outside of the touristy zone. I went to the first shop that did not have it and amazingly they did not try to sell me anything else and even more incredibly gave me the directions to competitor shop that specialises in the block print Rajastani design…. And then I got the really personalised shopping. I was patiently shown at least 20 designs or colours with absolutely no pressure to buy and allowed to make my own choice. Maybe I paid more than locals but I do not care. This shopping experience was just a pleasure!
Hello Sir, Yes Sir!
Actually, I probably should not have been bothered too much with the shopkeepers, eateries, rickshaws, guides etc hassling, because all of it is primarily directed to man. In most places, I did not exist at all. 99% of times it was Gavin who was approached… If they only knew how much he hates shopping:-) Me, however being me, I would without hesitation talk back, which sometimes was indeed a mistake. But you have to imagine how awkward it is to be reduced to being just the company of Sir. In many restaurants, Gavin would get the menu first and with the ‘Yes, Sir’ would get asked first to order, probably for himself and me. It was very surprising when in one restaurant in Jodhpur Fort, I was given menu first and asked first for my order. Sometimes also people would ask Gavin a question about me: ‘And she…?’ Thalis, Lassis and other incredible dishes
All our month in India we ate local. We continually sampled local specialities in Mumbai, Goa and Rajastan and tried the ‘pan-Indian’ dishes too. We ate cheap and a few times in a sort of more expensive restaurant (they were still cheap, though). We really liked almost all of our meals, though we are not experts in Indian cooking to really judge the quality. At some point we decided that our favourite dish through the travel was vegetable Jalfrezee; I am not sure about the spelling because every restaurant spelled it differently on the manu just as differently they cooked this dish! So it was always fun to order it just see how it would come out each time. Oh and the magnificent lassies! Before coming to India, I only knew (and loved) mango lassi but fortunately in November mangos are out of season so I got to sample lovely papaya, pineapple, banana and spice (cardamom and saffron) lassis and also discovered lemon lassi, which with its zesty taste is a real thirst quencher and now is my truly favourite! Shame that for the quantity of Indian restaurants in London, they all only serve mango lassi!
The only complaint we sometimes had about the food that especially in the tourist hubs is that they seem to tame the food for the foreigners, assuming that we cannot take the spice. So sometimes we had to ask to make like at home. On our last day in Udaipur we went for a real deal on the advisement of the ‘local’ English woman who has lived in Udaipur for a number of years and who we met over coffee on a leisurely Udaipur morning. She told us about this restaurant out of touristy zone where the locals go for a treat of thali lunch. Thali is a selection of various vegetarian curries served in small bowls, raita (curd either with pineapple or tomato cucumber and herbs and spices), chutneys and/or pickles that comes with the selection of breads and rice. There was no toning down of food for foreigners in this restaurant as we were the only tourist… We just sat down at the free thali plate and the procession of waiters filled up the plates with nans and papads and colourful and aromatic curries that were all spicy as hell! I think one was a mild dish but by the time I tried it my mouth was already burning so I am not sureJ I think it was our best and ‘truest’ indian dining experience but as we found ou later the price was high! Sparing the details let me just say that we had a really difficult last evening and night in Udaipur which was not helpful as we were boarding 7 am bus for a 6 hour journey to Jodhpur and after arrival in Jodhpur we went straight to bad again! After this experience we spent our last 2 days in India in Jodhpur eating little, safe and tame. The best and apparently the world’s largest selling biscuits ‘Parle-G’ got us through the trouble!
I forgot to mention that other than fish dishes in Goa, I was eating only vegetarian and only broke it at the sight of the ham and egg sandwich at the Delhi airport on our way out!
Please believe everything that Sabir says!
The one peculiar thing in the tourist services in India is the recommendations or remarks book that the hotels, shops, restaurants collect and display to right when you enter the door! Typically it is just a selling techniques where other travellers experience should convince you to buy more and more and exclusively use their own service. In Jaipur, we met at the first impression very quiet and polite tuk-tuk driver who after dropping us at the hotel, offered us an afternoon sightseeing tour of major sights for of course the best price in town and pulled out his book open at the page where a travellers from Ohio wrote: Fellow traveller, please believe everything that Sabir says…. Obviously, recommending somebody’s honesty is a big deal in India, to the point that it is an outstanding feature. We used his service the following day for a trip outside town to Amber palace. Yet, despite this outstanding recommendation he managed to misinform us about the sunset time which we of course missed in combination with is inability to find the right way to the sunset point! So, never believe somebody who is recommended to be believed in everything he says…. On the positive note, in Jodphur there a street food stall selling superb omelettes (yes it is recommended by Lonely Planet) and it also has is own book with comments raving about the quality of its food, where the two man genuinely pride themselves on the collection of comments from around the world and are able to find for you a few from your own country, even if they have to dig one from two years ago!
The End....
That’s it! This is my last blog from Incredible !ndia written mostly during our 15 hour waiting at the Delhi airport. Of course we could have just gone into town but considering how hostile we found the city during our first visit we thought the time would be better spent in the ‘protection’ of international airport facilities! Maybe we should have let Delhi redeem itself… but it was just easier and in case it would not, we will be leaving with the lovely memories from of last week from Udaipur and Jodhpur.
I could have written so much as our experiences were as vast as the India itself even though we only visited a small part of the country. I have not mentioned in my blog anything about our really good train journeys, not so good long-distance buses, a few lovely hotels that we stayed in (I hope to give them justice through a note on tripadvisor in the next spare moment), fellow travellers that we met along the way. I probably did not tell you enough about the splendour of the sights we visited but hopefully our photos give them some justice.
And the last word of warning! I am sure that everybody who comes here would have seen and experienced this country in a completely different way so this is just my version of Incredible !ndia.
After 2 days of travel (night train from Jodhpur, 15 hours at the Delhi airport, night flight from Delhi to Saigon through Bangkok and a short morning propeller flight from Saigon to Phu Quoc and half an hour taxi ride through some unpaved roads) we arrived in Freedomland resort on the Phu Quoc island. So in this blog I will describe of our 4.5 days in paradise or maybe heaven, not sure have not been in either, so that I have a record of how paradise or heaven should look like in case I do not make it there again.. 
Day 1: Right after checking in, absolutely exhausted we walked for 15 minutes to the closest beach as Freedomland is located inland unlike all other beach resorts on the island had some tropical juice we fell asleep and woke up when the sun was setting down. That’s it, that’s all we did on our first day
Day 2: We joined the boat trip to the northern secluded beach on the island, very close to the border with Cambodia and again not much happened… We swam in the middle of the sea, we sat on the beach with nobody else there and ate crabs caught on the beach and squid that we bought straight from the fishing boat on our way. The squid was served with crushed black pepper grown on the island with a bit of lemon! How simple and good.
Day 3: We woke up very late with a slight sunburn from previous day so we decided to rent a car for half day tour of the island. After we quick shopping at the local market where we had to use hands and pictorials to purchase some supplies we headed to the waterfall. Maybe it was not the world’s most spectacular waterfall but it was a great pleasure to shower under the crystal clear waters in complete seclusion! We went to the most southern end of the for a swim in the sea and returned home… 
Day 4: One day away from the beach was enough. We spend the day again on the beach in the Mango Bay resort where I treated myself with foot massage and a pedicure. My feet where very grateful J and we finished the day with beers over sunset! Day 5: Not much to say here… we just went to the beach in Mango Bay again and did absolutely nothing. Oh no, we read the book! 
The highlight of our stay in Phu Quoc was the dinner. Every night Peter (the owner of Freedomland) cooked a communal 5-course dinner from the fresh produce that he bought in the market. I am not a foodie and certainly not a food writer so I do luck words to explain how good it was! So just take my word for it, it was really great. It was mostly traditional Vietnamese cooking but we also had one Spanish tapas night. And the best part of this was that there was no menu, no choices to make, we just ate what we were served. And there was also the company! All the guests (who never met before) sat at the long table under the trees and chatted about everything and nothing, the French, English, Australian and surprisingly also Polish. Peter says that Polish people often come to his resort, always like and are the very welcomed guest! 
