A surprise encounter for both of us!

The journey from Jaipur to Bharatpur was only supposed to take 3 hours but there was the inevitable hold up en route where we slowly passed the remains of a local bus with crushed engine and a tanker lorry that had gone down the embankment into a field.  Before we even left the bus station there was some excitement and two young men were caught doing something wrong and were hauled off by the police. To leave the City of Jaipur we had to go through one of the surrounding hills via one of the coming and going tunnels. It is a major dual carriageway but you can pass on left or right of a vehicle in front although mostly the lorries hug the central reservation. We left in bright sunlight but very soon it became murky and a sign ‘accident prone area’ proved right when we passed two lorries, also down the embankment.  I was on a posh Volvo intercity bus and their drivers are excellent but ours talked non stop for the first hour to his female ticket collector and used his horn incessantly.  We passed innumerable toll booths at which time the ticket lady extracted change from her bag and took the receipt to carefully store afterwards.  There are always good things to see on a bus route – more so than in a train  We passed shepherds and goatherds with their flocks grazing what they could in the gulleys beside the road: architectural depots where they made all you could buy from an elephant to a cupola or window box (big enough to sit in) for your new home/palace: innumerable cow/buffalo patties stored on low walls for cooking and selling;  beautiful little dung and mud huts to store the patties in too with decorative patterns in the mud. I’ve noticed that each area has different sizes of patties and patterns.  We passed brick factories and magnificent white marble Sikh Temples.  Motor bikes were everywhere – out of the city hardly anyone wears a helmet so scarves were tightly wrapped around the ears.  Between vast areas of scrub land were pockets of irrigated farmland with bright green shoots emerging and dotted among the green were plenty of little white egrets gazing hopefully for a morsel to eat.  Mustard is in full flower – a gentler yellow than rape.
 
The bus left me at a giant intersection of roads as it was going on to Agra.  Immediately I was besieged by rickshaw and tuktuk wallahs wanting to take me but I had to disappoint them for it was only 100 yards to my lodge – 6 rooms and very basic but a comfy bed with citrus, banana, pomegranates and guavas growing outside my door. Little ground squirrels with stripes along their backs leap around chirruping tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk with their little tales bouncing up and down in unison. The lodge owner, Ashok, leaps to his feet when he hears parrots and pulls a string to a tin can with stone swinging inside which frightens them away from his guavas. He was born on this plot in the Civil Lines – an administrative area of towns where in British times those in charge lived. His wife made me vegetable soup for I haven’t eaten much for 24 hours – only lassies and banana shakes.  (Dental work not giving any trouble thank goodness.) The weather has changed and is not nice but I have plenty of warm clothes so nil desperandum.
 
I went for a two hour walk – hence the number of photos. Because it is foggy they aren’t very good but they are my first sightings of vulture, peacock, hornbill and painted storks amongst others.  I was invited into a field where an elderly couple invited me to have chai and I sat on their charpoy (string bed) while she cooked over her clay stove and we kept warm with the burning wood.  They lived in a low hut in the field but told me they had 15 buffalo at their farm in the town.  There were children everywhere all wanting to have their photos taken.  Even some adults too.  I shall have to make sure my battery is topped up every day.