Originally posted: January 13th, 2015
I’M BACK! #letsdothis
On the next day of my trip, March 14th, I woke up to go practice the ancient martial art of Kushti, or Indian wrestling. That’s already been covered in my blog though, so if you want to read about that or just go for the photos of me wearing next to nothing, sweating, and covered in mud, here ya go (If I were a hot girl, promoting my blog would be SO easy):
First day of Kushti
Second day of Kushti
Since that’s already been covered, we fast forward to the following day, March 15th, which was the big day trip to Jaipur, a beautiful city with historical and architectural intrigue. Known as the Pink City for its many structures with a pinkish hue, it is one of the “must-sees” for Northern India. We had this whole Saturday picked out in advance for our Jaipur trip, so woke bright and early and got ready to embark on the day trip of a lifetime; I was so excited! I’m struggling to recall if Nilesh was with us, but I hope so, cause he’s dope and has great taste in music (very important on long car rides). Anyway, we got in the car, and our driver whisked us away on an adventure sure to be filled with exciting places, beautiful sights, fascinating people, and a day of exploring with close friends.
“Hawa Mahal” Palace of the Winds (not my photo)
View out the window as we approach a toll. I LOVED these birds
Sitting. Creeping forward a few feet. Sitting again. Early morning cacophony of horns and occasional shouting. Waiting. This is traffic in Delhi. I was willing to endure, because being in a foreign country is like being 7 months old again; everything is riveting and sitting in a car on a packed highway with friends certainly isn’t the worst thing in the world. Having grown up in Delhi, however, my companions were not as keen on the prospect of sitting in traffic for possibly the next 7 hours. Also, Apoorva had been to Jaipur with other people numerous times so it really wasn’t worth it. We turned around after 40 minutes and saved ourselves the hassle. The way I see it, not going to Jaipur means I’ll just have to make another trip to India.
Not my photo. I googled Jaipur and found this… Apparently men ride lions there, as if I needed another reason to go
We navigated our way home, and passed the final stop on Apoorva’s metro line, HUDA City Centre, which the architect obviously modeled after the beautiful marriage of a Carnival Cruise and the Starship Enterprise (see below). We arrived home just in time for nap time. I can’t get over how many warm fuzzies I get just reminiscing on this trip.
Are we in space? – HUDA City Center, the final station on Apoorva’s metro line
Woke up from my nap to catch a peeping tom. Goodmorning friend! I was half waiting for him to fly into the room!
We woke up from our nap and had to figure out what to do for the day. We called up some friends and met them at Cyber Hub, a kind of shopping village/series of strip malls with great restaurants and an always bustling population. We went to Starbucks and Apoorva bought me a berry iced tea thing (so kind)(ps.. I tried to pay, but sometimes, when you’re a guest overseas, that just doesn’t work) that was really refreshing and tasty and really helped to cool me down. All the brown people got coffee cause I guess when you grow up in India, 85º (29º C) doesn’t phase you and you’re just like, ‘yeah, I’m not sweating and I can totally order a cup of steaming hot drink right now and be fine.’ We sat outside and chatted and I went back to my favorite hobby, people watching.
This is our view outside of Starbucks.
This is the last photo I have from the 15th, so I’m not really sure what we did with the rest of the day/night. Apoorva if you see this and recall, feel free to comment with your version of events. I’m guessing it involved hanging out at Rhea’s with Tara and Vedanti and Allie Cat (her dog) and having a wonderful time. I must say, Apoorva chose some awesome people to be close with. A1
Random thoughts:
Since it has been months since my trip, I’m writing the remaining blog posts from memory. My process is simple. Because iPhoto (bless it’s soul) automatically separates photos by date, I just open up the folder for one of the days, look at the photos, recreate what happened that day from the photos, tell you about it in the least boring way I can manage, add my favorite/relevant photos to the text, and hit publish. Generally speaking, I’m doing one blog post for each day. Amazingly simple. The best part is, since re-embarking on my bloggarific quest, going through this process is like I’m reliving the whole adventure. It’s a trip.
If you’re here but don’t have time to read, hope you enjoy the photos! <– most useless sentence ever. Note: All photos in this blog are mine unless stated otherwise
I just had surgery a few days ago and am home from work and on Oxy, so I hope these blog posts from the past few days have made sense.
Anyways, until we meet again, stay classy.
Jacobpura, Sector-12A, Gurgaon, Haryana 122001, India
