Indian stories - part 2- Jaipur

The bus was beeping all the way from Delhi to Jaipur. I was happy. I was getting into the real thing.

Having heard so much about tourist hassling, I got to experience it first hand. As we were approaching the city center my face became more puzzled as to where to get out. On one of the stops the experienced rickshaw driver read my mind, he jumped into the bus and started waving at me – "Yes, city center, city center, ma'am, get off." It was suspicious, so I decided to get off later (a good rule of thumb – get off when the driver kicks you out, he knows 99% of the time where tourists go). As the bus was turning into the bus station, I saw the crowd of rickshaw drivers running behind the bus. The quick ones managed to jump up and knock on my window to get the attention. There was no way to escape - I honestly got scared, but I survived.

My small guest house with an adorable owner was my safety heaven. He told me how to book train tickets, what to see in Jaipur, where to eat, where to buy jewelry. I slowly felt acclimatized.

Jaipur is one the cities of the Golden triangle (Agra, Varanasi and Jaipur), which means the city center revolves around tourism. Infinite number of rickshaws are fighting for tourists and driving the rates down. I was going around with a rickshaw for the whole day for 400 rs ($8) - the cheapest day rate (I could have negotiated it further down) I came across in India.

Jaipur is known as Pink City as it got painted in pink in honor of the Prince of Wales' visit in 1853. The most impressive architectural complex is outside Jaipur - the Amber Fort, built by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh in 1727.

Amber Fort:



The Jal Mahal:



The old town enclosed by pink walls buzzes with everyday life, to watch which is a fascinating but very tiring experience. I have never seen anything more crowed. Each bazaar street consists of 6-7 "layers" of activities - shops, shopping alley, another line of sellers, people cleaning anything from plates to themselves, parking for rickshaws, more pedestrians walking, street food, washing facilities, cycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, occasional camel or elephant on the way to Amber Fort, cars, buses, mopeds, bikes. Everything that can make noise makes noise, everything that can beep - beeps. The city catches you and never lets you go. Not many people like Jaipur, but I was amazed at the intensity. Never visiting a city was more tiring.

Hawa Mahal, Jaipur:


First lesson learned:

As we were taught in rafting - let the river take care of you, do not fight it - the same with India, learning to go with the flow was essential to enjoy the trip.

Some pictures from the City Palace where the current Maharaja of Jaipur lives - His Highness Sawai Bhawani Singh Bahadur.






The rest of the pictures on flickr [link].

India - part 1

Preface

One thing is nagging me almost everyday - my unshared stories and pictures from India. I arrived to Delhi on the 14th of October 2008, scared but excited to experience something extraordinary as predicted by a lot of fellow travellers. Even though everyone was telling me different things about India, one thought was shared - India is so special that it is indescribable unless you experience it. This notion is annoying at times you make travel plans, but I am forced to agree with it thinking back on my experiences.

India is everything you want it to be and ready to make out of it. It is a chameleon that can change and adjust to your moods and spirits. A very good thought from a book called Holy Cow! by Sarah Macdonald:

"India is beyond statement, for anything you say, the opposite is also true. It's rich and poor, spiritual and material, cruel and kind, angry but peaceful, ugly and beautiful, and smart but stupid. It's all the extremes. India defies understanding. [...] What's more, India's extremes are endlessly confronting."


The first two weeks in India are crucial as all your senses are assaulted quite literally with different smells, noise, crowds of people, traffic, weather, pollution, weird food, etc. However, how you react will tell you a lot about yourself and that's the journey what makes India so special for everyone who opens up to it.

--

Part 1

India was the first country on my itinerary that I decided to attack without a plan. I certainly heard about Agra, Varanasi and Himalayas, but I did not even manage to buy a guidebook before arrival.

The first 3 days in India I stayed in South Delhi with the family of my former colleague. Never was I more hopeless than in that beautiful posh house. I was dealing with traditional Indian family hierarchy and procedures. I could not leave the house without a car, I could not get my own bus/train/plane ticket, I could not even get a guidebook without help. Nothing was within the walking distance of the house, and I did not feel comfortable asking for "secretary services".

The only thing that kept me sane was Indian pop music that I was watching for hours while confined within four walls. Indian pop music must be the best free antidepressant invented. When you watch Indian music clips with colourful synchronized group dancing you automatically start giggling, dancing and doing the hand twist movement. The gorgeous girls, hot guys, eye expressions, clothes, scenes are so entertaining that I was left wondering if they were for real. Is it a parody? But why? Later I learned that most of the songs are from Bollywood movies and are performed by the movie stars themselves. They can play, dance and sing. Needless to say I was converted into a big fun of Indian pop.

See what I am talking about:



Kabhi Kabhi was the song of my stay in India. Two weeks later I had it on my phone from a nice kid in Bikaner, Rajasthan.

Finally, I got my bearings together. Having decided to do the northern India in a better season, Varanasi and Agra in a more trained for India condition, I bought a bus ticket to Jaipur, Rajasthan. My real trip starts there and takes me on the following route:



[Read on soon...]

It's shitty all around

It’s kind of scary outside the INSEAD bubble. The news from home country are worrying – my former macroeconomics professor describes the situation in Latvia as seriously depressing. I will collect real-life stories about the situation after my short visit next week. The developments in the US market are analysed by every news portal obviously and no light is visible in that tunnel either. So why study for the exams? Maybe extending INSEAD is not such a bad idea... [but unfortunately not a real option]

Rawa Dreams

After an intense week we packed our bags and after a few hours of sleep on FridaY night woke up at 5 am to leave for a small paradise called Pulau Rawa in Malaysia. The island is tiny - it took us 30 minutes to circle it in a kayak. The water is unbelievably clear and the sand is really white.







INSEADers are hyper active and during 30 hours on the island we managed to snorkel, kayak, play beach volleyball, polo, Frisbee, hike, swim, jump off the jetty, get sun burnt. I personally could have used more hammock time with a book.

12 hours of sleep Saturday night helped and I am back in a 6-hour sleep mode in Singapore.

New Management Science

I invented new type of management – free passport space management. It involves a number of stages:

1. Stressing out about failure to persuade the immigration officer to stamp passport on a certain page
   
2. Choosing strategically a smiling immigration officer
   
3. Smiling intensively and asking in the sweetest voice NOT to stamp a blank page
   
4. Stressing out even more when the officer shuffles hopelessly through the passport
   
5. Standing on toes to see what's going on behind the counter
   
6. Hear the "execution", i.e. passport being stamped
   
7. Check eagerly the passport. Upon success, booking another trip immediately. Upon failure, rethink the next 4 months in Asia.
   

At this point of time I have 2 blank pages in my passport. I need one page for Thailand for visa-on-arrival and the second for non-persuaded immigration officer. So far I managed with my new management science to get a single entry visa-sticker to Indonesia on a used page and two entry/exit stamps to Malaysia on used passport pages. It is getting harder by an hour. Ideally I will save my extra space for Indonesia or Vietnam or Cambodia in the summer break.

Jet lag

What’s new on campus? I guess I am going through the hardest week of P1 at INSEAD. A number of cases are due, price games, individual cases, a quiz on Friday, another exemption exam also on Friday. Besides that I am organizing a trip for 10 people, participating in a student club and try not to fall back with other classes. Final exams of P1 are looming in two and a half weeks.

Interestingly enough my most productive hours aka when my brains seem to be awake are from 8 pm till 11 pm. Can I still be jet lagging five weeks after the landing in Singapore?

job market? what job market?

Some of us are in the midst of applying to finance jobs (or rather what's left of it).

Others postpone the job search till later.

Nevertheless we eagerly read the news about INSEAD corporate recruiters on campus whose names keep piling up in the wrong list. (another one)

And of course "black" humor



Personally I believe the crisis will be far from over by the end of 2009 and we are here for a rough landing.

Academics

Four weeks into the classes, half way through Period 1 and we start to feel the weight of the academic load. Classes move rapidly and the amount of the unknown, unread, not-calculated material increases in geometrical sequence. Thanks to our great professors and my daily minimum studying I feel I am still afloat. But I honestly expected the core courses to be 'mas o menos' repetition of my undergrad. Not really. One of the similar things between INSEAD and SSE (among many) is how we adapt the new words/concepts to daily communication. All of a sudden "sunk costs", "opportunity costs", "valuation" enter conversations over lunch. My $100 lost two nights ago was immediately labeled as sunk costs, thus irrelevant to the current mood. I know all that, but I still want sympathy! Active learning 101.

The classes themselves are a lot of fun. Either teachers make them interesting and entertaining, or us (e.g. bingo game) or the subjects themselves. Only last week we were eating M&Ms in Statistics class to demonstrate sample vs population statistics with counting red M&M before jumping into Central Limit Theory, confidence intervals (mind numbing material).

In Price & Markets Professor Dutt revealed the existence of a real cappuccino at Starbucks (called short cappuccino) vs. tall/grande/venti ones as an example to explicit market segmentation. Microeconomics is my least favorite subject, but here I am actually enjoying (maybe more the professor than the subject).

For Leading People and Organizations we were watching Twelve Agry Men before the discussion on leadership. Besides that it's an amazing movie, I guess it is the idea behind Mikhalkov movie "12".