Musings on the gym, regurgitation, and camels

Jodhpur was pretty nice. The big attraction, as is the case with most cities in Rajasthan, is the big fort overlooking the town. The town itself is known as the “blue city” because many buildings are painted blue, as is the tradition of the Brahmin caste which largely populated the city (or something like that). Walking around you do definitely see quite a few powder blue buildings, but not some much to make you say that the whole city is blue. That is, until you get up in the fort and are looking down at it from the top of the hill, at which point you say “Oh, yeah, it’s blue”. Be sure to check out the snaps as I got some pretty cools ones there.

Aside from the city itself, I really enjoyed the people in Jodhpur. I had many decidedly non-commercial interactions with people. Since I didn’t get a good night’s sleep either night in Udaipur, I slept in a bit the first evening in Jodhpur to catch up. By the time I worked out in the morning and got cleaned up, I had missed breakfast. So I headed out looking for some street food, and found an interesting looking place that was making some kind of pakora, some fried thing that was like a big mash of some kind of mystery paste, potatoes, and a whole green chile. Pretty tasty. I also picked up some scrumptious, drippy-goey Indian sweets there. As I was doing this I got in a conversation, or maybe just a semi-conversation because he hardly spoke a word of English, with a guy also grabbing a bite there. He was recommending certain sweets to try, etc. He actually bought me the different things he recommended, which was a refreshing change of pace. I thanked him, waved goodbye, and headed over to check out the town center. While milling around there I ran into him again. He sees me, and says, “Oh, you must have omelette!” “Omelettes?”, I think to myself. Anyways, he pulls me over to this shop to order a masala cheese omelette. I’m not really hungry any longer at this point and don’t want to spoil my lunch, but it’s nice to interact with somebody that doesn’t have an ulterior motive and I want to be polite so I sit down, I share a chai with him while waiting for my omelette. While waiting, his brother, a bodybuilder, shows up and we also get in a conversation as he hoovers down a plate of egg whites. I wasn’t very impressed with the omelette, but it was again nice to connect with some locals. And to my embarrassment, he buys my breakfast again over my protestations. So it was a nice start to the day.

After that I burned off my superfluous omelette by hoofing it up to the fort and checking it out. I then head over to the market, and go searching out a particular place for lunch. It occurs to me that I’ve got time, so I decide to grab a workout. All I can do in my room is pushups, situps, and chair dips, so it would be nice to get one workout in while I’m in India for my back, shoulders, and biceps. So I ask the guys at the restaurant if they know of a gym in the area, and luckily they know of one about ½ mile away. It takes me quite a bit of time and multiple queries for directions to find the place, but eventually I get there and walk in. There doesn’t appear to be anyone working the desk at the moment, but the few guys working out there come over and invite me in. I ask if I should pay somebody first, and they all respond, “Hey, don’t worry about it. Just come on in.” So the workout commences. I’m just in my street clothes, but it doesn’t really matter as that’s what half the guys there are wearing anyways. It’s about 4:30 at this point, so I suppose the after-work/school crowd is now arriving, and the place if filling up with people. It definitely wasn’t that great a workout, but was a rather amusing experience. After hitting my recently neglected muscle groups, dispensing 75 pieces of workout and diet advice, posing for about 50 photos with 15 different guys (including quite a few flexing poses, to my embarrassment), and being told about a dozen times that I look like Salman Khan (a Bollywood actor I don’t even vaguely resemble aside from the fact that we’re both in shape), I ask one more time if I should pay somebody. I’m told by the guy that works as a personal trainer there that showed up after I did, “No need”, so I thank everybody and head out.

Later that night I also had a great time chuming around with some locals at an internet café, and then went out to grab a nice dinner. So Jodhpur was on track to be a fantastic time. And then disaster strikes. That night I become seriously ill. At first this manifests itself simply as an extreme case of traveler’s intestinal problems, but it progresses to include a severe stomach ache, fever, chills, and nausea. By the next morning I’d gotten to the point of experiencing my second or third worst illness of my adult life, which needless to say, kind of throws a wrench in the plans of driving 4 hours to Jaisalmer and going on an overnight camel safari that evening. My driver, who had stopped behaving lake a jerk the day before, updates my hotel reservations and arranges for me to stay another day in Jaipur and brings me some “Indian medicine”. I thus spend almost the entire day lying around in bed and trying to sleep. I also hardly ate. All day long I just had two mango lassis and two bowls of milk porridge. I did get up in the evening to go across the street to the internet café and finalize my flight reservations to visit my colleagues in Hyderabad 6 days later, in the middle of which I run outside into the street and throw up the copious amounts of water I had been trying to force into my stomach in an effort to rehydrate myself. I barely made it outside and ended up splattering some of my vomit all over a cow that was hanging around near the front door, but I didn’t get the impression that she minded all that much. At least after this my stomach felt much better.

The next day I’m well enough to drive in a car, so we head to Jaisalmer. My buddy from New Zealand said it was his favorite city in India, and some of the photos I had seen look amazing, so I had high expectations. I ended up being a little underwhelmed. I think the uncooperative weather had a lot to do with this. Jaisalmer is situated in the northwestern Indian desert, just 90 km from Pakistan. Its fort, along with just about all the other buildings in town, are made of the local sandstone, which blend into the desert background and supposedly achieve a golden glow when lit up by the dusk or the evening lights. Unfortunately, though, it’s overcast, rainy, foggy when I get there. This appears to have been my luck recently, showing up in the desert and getting rained on. So I think it may have ruined the appearance of what is otherwise a very atmospheric place.

By the next morning, I’m feeling close to 100%. About my only serious lingering effect is that I no longer have any appetite for the rich, spicy Indian curries I had previously been enjoying so much. I’m now getting by mostly on lassis, the western-style breakfasts which heretofore I wasn’t touching, and drier and less rich food like tandoori items with rice. I even feel good enough for the camel safari at this point. However, the weather is still lousy. It’s not raining, but is still overcast, foggy, and damp. After being sick for three days the last thing I’m interested in is freezing my ass off in the damp desert evening, but the forecast keeps saying it’s going to be sunny, so I go for it. Alas, this also doesn’t quite live up to expectations. I pictured myself being Lawrence of Arabia for a day, and instead it was more like a day at the petting zoo, after which I froze my ass off in the extremely damp and cold desert evening with the crappy, moisture-soaked blankets they provided. I did make some nice company while out there, there was an excellent dance performance in camp, and it was fun to get to ride a camel for an hour or so, but if I had to do it over again I would have just paid somebody to let me take an hour-long camel ride in Pushkar and then instead of spending the night in a hut with damp blankets that were fouled with camel shit, I could have spent it in a hotel with clean sheets and indoor plumbing. Maybe next time.