Escape from Sun City

Tuesday 8:45 a.m., March 17th, 2009
Back in Jaipur Rajasthan

(still no photos uploading...)

Groggily awakening from the warehouse-cruising stupor of recent days, and recovering from last night’s hair-raising ride down what passes for the Jodhpur-Jaipur highway.

I’ve generally appreciated my driver Ram’s acumen behind the wheel, and yesterday’s 5:30 p.m. departure started well—making good time, safely. But come darkness, I have to say I had my first ever sense in India that I’d rather be behind the wheel myself—which is a sort of deathwish. But Ram had this habit of gunning the accelerator and then slamming down on the brakes just milliseconds before whatever speed bump or cow or vehicle was coming our way—a couple of times it through me off the back seat; I had to remain sort of tensed and at the ready to stiff-arm the seat in front of me to avoid losing my teeth on any given sudden jerk. Man, after a few hours, I wanted out.

But on to better things.

These next couple days Jaipur is hosting a Dhrupad Festival of classical Indian music; Shyamdas and Tulsi arrived last night, Vasant is here with his pakhawaj teacher Sri Mohan Sharma ji. It should be a fun break from the buying action.

I have much work left to do in Jaipur, but I’m hoping I can both get it done and relax with friends here for a few days…