Sunday, November 22, 2015

Day 3 - Jaipur

Disclaimer - The contents of the following post are strictly intended for the female readers. The curious sex may note that this does not mean, there are hidden references of "lingerie" "lacy underwear" etc.

Not in a blogworthy mood but just wanna record everything before I forget.

Day was splendid, woke up barely in time to get breakfast on the hotel's gorgeous terrace garden and bumped into the cutest Mumbai boy ever. We hit it off instantly with our stories of coming back to India and I was just beginning to feel that rush which was instantly broken by the news that it was his last day in the city, and he would be driving off to Bikaner with a bunch of travelers in the night. He mentioned going gem shopping for his mom before and asked me if I'd like to help him pick something out. The words Jaipur and Shopping sounded like a big joke since my zillion visits to the city ended with living in Jaipur Palace, driving to amber fort or nahargarh and spending quiet moments contemplating. Besides, he said he wanted a woman's opinion and the firangi women he was traveling with weren't of much help as they wanted to do their own thing, and my own friends had plans to see Amer fort which I had seen already a zillion times. Having never even seen 'the city side' of Jaipur I decided to venture out, besides did I mention he was cute? Ah well.

So, we walked down to this market place which wasn't very far from our hotel. Its called Chameli Market and located on M.I Road. The market starts off in an alleyway, and can be really hard to notice. As we ventured inside, we could see lots of silver/gem stores huddled together. The shops seemed average, and I was still wondering why the fuck am I wasting time doing all this, well anyway, now that I was there I might as well feign interest. He already knew which shop he wanted to go to and had a piece selected from the previous day. The shop's name was ____ - and its owner was a huge guy named Girish. He showed us the most spectacular bracelets, rings etc made with gems. This market is perfect for all kinda silver shopping and Gems! They do mostly wholesale - but the designs are modern, unique, dainty and extremely reasonable. I found the ruby necklace I had fallen for in Agra which was priced at $20K there, but only 80K rupees here. Expensive still, but just citing an example. He bought a stunning silver bracelet encrusted with the most gorgeous crystals ever for his mum (or gf, who knows, who cares!). I instantly loved it and we negotiated it to a reasonable price of 4K before heading off.

We then had a long lunch at Moti Mahal and soon realized it was well past afternoon. All this jewelery shopping had got me excited, and I decided to buy something made in gold for my mom. The Chameli Market may be great for silver, but if you're looking for gold "Jauhari Bazar" is the place. Its right next to Bapu Bazar (which is the clothes market) and is further down on MI Road. We decided to drive since it was getting really hot, and came back to the hotel where his car was parked.

Jauhari Bazar was whole different ball game, nothing like quiet alleys of silver market. It was hundreds of shops in a long stretch along a busy road. The shops all look small, but don't let their modest appearance deceive you since they hide some of the most gorgeous gold jewelery India has to offer. I looked at almost a billion designs before realizing I didn't wanna buy gold after all, and wanted gems which means going back to Chameli Bazar. I decided to do that by myself tomorrow. Besides men and shopping don't really go well together :P

As we walked back the parking, we saw a huge sweets shops and casually entered just to check out what was going on, and I saw a huge board stating "Famour Paneer Ghewar", which was on my recommended items list. Having no clue what it looked like, I asked an aunty to point me in its direction. We decided we were craving something sweet, but were hardly interested in buying anything, so we started asking for a taste of different sweets. We tried ghevar, gajar halwa, gulab jamun, some chocolate burfy thingy etc before the manager realized we were just fooling around. Still, it was fun :D and the sweet doze uplifted our moods.

We drove back to the hotel as the sun was beginning to set. We went back to my room since I wanted him to meet the girls, but they weren't back from their adventures. So we just chilled for a while, laughed over the day we'd had, exchanged numbers, travel plans and bid goodbye. I'm beginning to love goodbyes, cause it leads to a early happy ending instead of an inevitable disappointment eventually.

Back to my black and white lawyer life tomorrow. The courtrooms await ;)

Hyderabad : The city of pearls.

Been three months in this idiosyncratic city, and life more than demands recording all that's been experienced, learned (if anything), and the varied experiences this charming old town city offers. At times it feels like my learning has reached nowhere. On the other side, the nomad in me feels restless feeling the exploration has reached its peak and time to move on might be quite near.

I've met all kinda people in this rustic city, people who love it to their core, people who wouldn't want anything more than getting out, and others who have spent years making up their mind. I'm just an observer who may not connect with this town ever.

For the eternal romantics there's plenty in this town to keep em satiated, from the cloudy evenings at Hussain Sagar Lake, late night walks along necklace road and what nots.

And for the nomads there's the old city, where charminar and Haleem entrances and lures you to their heritage.