street side lunch

we've a uniquely singaporean habit of visiting stalls that come with complimentary newspaper reviews. visit any 'famous' hawker in singers and you'll see a stall front plastered with foodie articles, occasionally with grinning celebs embracing the hawker in question. it was comforting to observe that this practice might not be solely singaporean in nature, as when we were in jaipur, our guide brought us to this one lady surrounded by aluminium drums. she, too, was newspaper-famous. one look at our aghast faces (sigh, bad tourists) and the guide read our minds. "it's ok," he reassured us, "i bring my tourists here all the time and they don't get delhi belly after!" the mister is usually up for anything, but the thought of running to the loo for the duration of our return flight did not appeal to him. nor me. i did feel bad though! wouldn't the lady be insulted? but the guide was hungry and we were more than happy to buy a few helpings of the deep fried dough fritters swimming in a peppery water mix.

the taj

now no trip to india would be complete without a visit to the taj. truth be told, i wasn't too keen to jostle with the throngs of tourists. i mean, it's just a block of white marble. meh. but am i glad i was wrong, and glad for the mister who nudges me out of my crowd-averse comfort zone and gets me to face life head-on. the mister is resourceful and research showed that the taj was most impressive at dusk i.e. to watch the marble glow different colours in the setting sun. there is a certain beauty to the symmetry and i can almost imagine the bereaved maharajah deliriously in love building this mausoleum for his deceased wife.

speaking of marriage, i hadn't realised just how conservative india/indians were. every where we went, people (passport control / shop keepers / guides / museum ticket collectors etc) would ask if we were married and their attitude would visibly change once they learnt we were. it was after this happened a few times that i thought, "maybe they don't approve of unmarried couples traveling together". like when we were getting our visas on arrival, the immigration officer was quite stern until he learnt we were married. then his whole countenance softened and was all, "oh! but you married! stay long time no problem!" uh so if we were just dating, we would have to leave sooner? i also found that the men would bond based on the shared understanding of being married. the string of guides we had really warmed to the mister and would tell him about their wives and families. also, at one of the museums, an artist sketched a portrait on my postcard and asked for my name, adding the mister's name to the drawing only after confirming that we were married. how bizarre!

amber fort

the highlight of our time in jaipur was visiting the amber fort. i'm no history buff but it's got to do with the maharajah and his multiple wives and concubines. honestly, i was more intrigued by the elephant ride, and good to know i'm no longer allergic to indian elephants (long boring story of childhood atopy). i mean, rush hour jaipur stylez is kinda cool when you've a row of elephants as far as the eye can see. through it all, i kept thinking of that scene from the jungle book when the elephants were marching with mowgli at the end.

our guide for the day was a former lawyer with a masters in history (!!!) and the mister and i were discussing how when a tour guide earns more than a lawyer, something is seriously messed up with the country. don't get me wrong - not knocking tour guides at all, but our guide was telling us how when he qualified 13 years ago, he was expected to work for a year with no pay, irregardless of his performance. i was thinking of the S$500/month i received while taking the bar exam course but to be fair, considering how that's less than the minimum wage of filipino domestic help, it was more stipend than salary. so our guide switched to tourism and hasn't looked back.

oberoi rajvillas

what pricked my conscience even more in india was the stark contrast between where we stayed and what was beyond the compound walls. when i was in stockholm on exchange, my swedish law professor was quite candid about how she only went on holiday to first world countries with high standards of living like switzerland and france. at that time, i found it quite narrow-minded. just because you don't see poverty, doesn't mean it's not there. but when we visited india, i saw things from her perspective. knowing that there were children starving just 200m from where we were surrounded by opulence was hard to stomach. made me wonder if it'd be worth donating the money we spent on accommodation to a local charity we could trust, and staying at a guest house for a mere fraction of the hotel rate. after all, it's all about efficient allocation of resources, and the opportunity cost of staying at a fancy place, isn't it. couldn't help but wonder just how far my £30 (average cost of a meal inside the hotel) would go if i gave the money away and had crackers for dinner instead. 

what also surprised me was how quickly i was desensitised to the poverty. on the second day, i found it easier to ignore beggars, and felt less guilty about being relatively better off. that said, it's incredibly hard to be an entitled brat when you learn the value of money. it's hard to justify a lavish lifestyle on the basis of, 'i work hard, i deserve a break' because compared to the locals, no, i don't work hard. the going rate for a porter at the rail station was 50p per suitcase. i mean, like, dude, my suitcase is almost 30kg. and this old man is going to carry it (and more bags!) over 500m from the taxi to the baggage rail for less than cost of a candy bar. unreal. and then i end up giving the porter something ridiculous like 300% the agreed rate, and my packed lunch, just because i'm way too soft.

but i digress, and this post is really about the oberoi rajvillas. i don't often mention hotels by name because 1) name dropping isn't cool 2) the mister paid for the room, why advertise for free but occasionally we stay some where that leaves us really impressed. the service was impeccable and the absolute best we've ever experienced. i'm also partial to tents (not) and the mister made it look like glamping. for the first time, i slept in a "tent" with zero trepidation. the food was amazeballs - i'd thought i'd good indian food before but nothing came close to what the in-house restaurants served up. cheese and garlic naans on tap? yes please! the rooms (well, our tent) was super comfortable and the grounds so luxe it was unreal. i mean, the lawn was hand-manicured and while it did feel a bit like job creation, there was an army of gardeners pruning bushes by hand. the personable GM was warm and welcoming, and every member of staff we met had initiative in spades. it was almost like they could read our mind and conjure up whatever we wanted before we even asked for it. the mister and i are quite particular about food sources and the waiter picked up on that and smoothly reassured us that the fish was local and line-caught. they also had the best recommendations and seem to have mastered the knack of sharing their culture and customs with us without being patronising. 

we did make a pitstop at the oberoi in agra and while good, the oberoi rajvillas set the bar so high that oberoi agra paled in comparison. if you're ever in jaipur and have the chance to stay at the oberoi rajvillas, do go. it's hands down one of the best hotels we've ever stayed in and somewhere i'm keen to re-visit. 

 

jaipur

we landed bright and early in new delhi and left straight for jaipur. the five hour drive whizzed by, although i suspect we were asleep for a large part. hey, after a red eye plagued by screaming babies, what else were we to do? catching up on zz did feel like a waste though, because the sights we passed en route were nothing short of fantastical. i fell in love with the striking red turbans the men wore, and the contrast with their white outfit? defo hitting the right sartorial notes.

there were also many "heart pain" moments. i'm probably not the first visitor to be shocked by the chasm between the have and have nots. it was disconcerting and disturbing, when the street children were banging on the car windows for food, we just had to harden our hearts and turn away. of course we'd stockpile buns from the breakfast buffet the next few days to misappropriate on the drive, but it was more to assuage my own conscience than anything else. how do you help every hungry child? i used to be against pri*mark after the mister educated me on appalling child labour practices, but child labour versus begging / languishing in squalor? toughie. what really got to me was how everyone has hopes, dreams and aspirations. but why do some people (like me!) get to pursue and realise that dream, while others, by sheer accident of birth, don't. karma isn't something i believe in personally, but i can see why it's one of the few ways to make sense of the inequality out there. many people in india accept their lot and are motivated to do good works by the promise of being reborn into a better life. i wish i had better developed ideas, and a more sound understanding of philosophy and suffering. thank goodness for the mister who helps me articulate the existential rumblings, and works through one ethical conundrum after another with me.

the himalayas

i harbour no intentions to ever climb to base camp, much less conquer everest. but soaking up the himalayas from the plane window? spectacular. even more so when bathed in that dewy golden light of dawn. didn't hurt that breakfast was being served (doesn't a hot meal make everything even better?) and despite the screaming baby (AUGH i have a personal vendetta against parents who irresponsibly let their offspring yell away... -death glare-) the views were pretty darn awesome. oh my, parents. maybe it's just me but they can be so entitled and self-absorbed. i'm at the age where my fb newsfeed is flooded with baby photos and updates, to the point where i'm so glad for fb's block function. 

i really don't care if your kid produced a poop. or rolled over. or pulled gas-induced funny face. by the same token, people probably don't care about what the mister and i get up to in london, so i really shouldn't judge being similarly guilty of splashing a (small) part of our lives on fb. 

obnoxious parent rant aside, we bent our "go west" rule for india (and for the maldives in january) because the world is so big and there's so much we want to see. again, maximising being in london and trying to keep our travels west-ward or europe-bound, but occasionally the opportunity to fly east is too good to resist. doesn't hurt that the mister is ever-organised and ever-resourceful, making every holiday happen because i just follow for the ride (and photos, he doesn't take many photos). occasionally he's on my case for putting some of it on social media (his friends know exactly what he's up to despite him keeping a low profile) and i'm slowly figuring out what's kosher, or not. london's an amazing city and we're so grateful to be living here. but we do have our off days, more me than him, and occasionally get itchy feet desperately in need of a change of scenery. so tadaaa! mr. planner supreme throws a metaphorical dart at our equally metaphorical world map and it's off to more exotic climes. 

freeeedommmM!

p/s brief travelogue to follow in the next few days :)

p/p/s it's not our first foray to the subcontinent! if you'd like to see, we've visited in 2010 and i even did a piece on goa that the lovely lavishley was so kind as to publish.