VII - Blue City
The first week of travelling is dominated by inconvenience. You have to get used to that prelapsarian world where you didn’t have a phone because yours doesn’t work, or, if it does, you know it’s costing you like £12 a day. In a similarly nostalgic moment you return to cash as there’s no guarantee anywhere will take card payment (in India they don’t) and having discarded your wallet in 2007 you have to find somewhere to stuff cash with monopoly numbers on it. Washing clothes in hotels is expensive so you start wearing everything for days. And you can never find anything because as you approach middle-age you’ve learned that the only way to find things is to keep putting them back in the same place, but when you’re constantly moving that is impossible.
The first week of travelling is also strewn with moments of culture-shock. Remembering to clean your teeth without water, looking both ways before crossing a street (in India people drive on the left and the right). Not reacting to the man urinating on the busy high street. Learning how to tip appropriately. The constant noise, the relentless attention you cause, the bad coffee (there is also good coffee if you look hard).
The second week of travelling you’ve made the adjustments. Got a phone. Mentally adjusted to the exchange rate – in fact so complete is this that you cannot bear being overcharged. Your are scandalised when someone asks 150 rupees for a rickshaw ride that costs 100 rupees. In London you would not have given a whistle for 50p more on a cab ride but here it is OUTRAGEOUS and you walk away simmering about being taken for a fool.
By the second week you’ve adjusted to the change in circumstance. Your hygiene has plummeted. You have mentally switched off your interest in how things taste and just accepted that you’re going to eat it anyway and the real challenge is going to be getting your children to eat anything. The rickshaw rides are no longer exhilarating but uncomfortable. But you’re alive to the difference – the things to see, the colours, the smells, the trace of exotic that pushes many to travel.
On the third week you’re starting to get annoyed. You look at some of the things going on around you and it seems not romantic anymore but ridiculous: the motor bikes racing at 20mph through streets a metre wide, the rubbish on the street, the constant, shrieking noise, the ATMs that don’t work, the man still urinating on the busy high street.
You’re also getting disgusted with yourself. You never seem to have any clean clothes – I put on a “fresh” t-shirt this evening and was immediately told it smelled. The fact that you don’t have normal things with you; you’re unable to exercise as you normally would. You spend hours in dark rooms reading or writing quietly while your children sleep.
And, of course, anyone who has spent two weeks effectively living in one room, travelling with, inseparable from, their family knows the build-up of tension. Patience dries up, thoughtfulness evaporates, perspective narrows. Throw in the exhaustion of constant moving and novelty, unfamiliar food and sleeping arrangements, homesickness and diarrhoea (Apollo and myself remain unaffected), the bonds become very close and explosive like nuclear fusion.
Thus, we now find ourselves in Jodhpur, which in my experience so far has surprisingly few farriers and equestrian clothing stores, dipping below our best humour, having had a wonderful few days in Jaisalmer feeling like we’re smashing it. It’s a blue city so perhaps we have third week blues. I took the children out this morning while Rhiannon rested and came back in under an hour as a boy needed to “vomit from his bottom” – which is the best description of that tedious affliction I’ve ever heard. I was glad, however, as being around the famous clocktower and market had felt like being in Monaco while the grand prix was on. The city could be beautiful with an adequate approach to waste and an outright ban on motorcycles. As it is they weave down streets where the average American would struggle to squeeze and gaily draw alongside you screaming their horns “just to let you know they’re there”, stopping to pinch your furious child’s cheek, sell you spice or take you somewhere for a very good price.
I went out later on my own with murder in my mind. Without the burden of protecting children I could be as awkward as I liked and fantasized about hiring a motorbike and playing them at their own game – which would, I am the first to admit, end badly. But getting a little exercise, a little fresh air, a little time on my own, the bad temper turned to something else. The constant friendliness is tempered by self-interest, but it is also friendliness, especially towards children. The driving is maddening but I’ve still not seen any accident. It made me long for quiet walks in English hills but I’m pretty sure no one else was feeling that. Let’s just put it down to third-week blues and hope that with some fresh washing turning up tomorrow, we are a bit more recovered from the long trains and city-grime, and can leave our blue hotel behind to enjoy the annual kite festival, up away from the motorbikes, stray dogs and urine, up in the atmosphere, up where the air is clear.
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