Dodging rickshaw-wallahs

Having seen enough of Jaisalmer, we took the long bus back to Jodhpur this morning, but not before we could enjoy a Nutella and banana pancake for breakfast. We were tempted to get the pasta we had last night for dinner, but 8:00 was just too early.

With Mr. Belches behind us, and another Mr. Spits in front of us, it was another long ride back to Jodhpur, but still not too bad. When we arrived, we were assaulted by rickshaw guys at the bus stand and had to argue our way onto one that accepted our price. We wanted to go to the government bus station and everyone else wanted to charge us double what we wanted to pay. When we found a guy who was happy to charge us the proper price of 30 rupees, he got into an argument with a few other drivers. One of them even physically blocked our way onto the rickshaw and we had to kind of shove him out of the way. The bad man who wanted 50 rupees finally agreed to 30, but only after we'd gotten in the rickshaw of the good guy who had immediately agreed on 30. So the bad guy tried to say some story about this rickshaw not being the next in line to leave (Nigel's response: "That means nothing to me, I don't care, this man has agreed to 30 rupees and we'll be taking this rickshaw.", and that we'd have to wait at least 2 hours until this rickshaw left (Nigel's response: "That's okay, we're happy to sit here and wait.". We knew he was lying of course, and our rickshaw driver was finally able to take off. Along the way, he told us that the bad man was a cheat and overcharges everyone. He was a good guy.

Interestingly Nigel had just had a quick conversation with a teacher on the bus about this very thing. The teacher asked how Nigel liked the Indian people to which he replied 'Some are good.' The teacher asked why and Nigel explained that everyone was trying to cheat us and rip us off. The teacher seemed a bit shocked by this and appealed to his friend saying he was a good guy. His wise friend then replied 'The robber never tells you he is a robber until he has robbed you.' Unfortunately our experience in India has not been at all improved through our interaction with the people. And until proven otherwise, we will enter each new encounter on the defensive.

At the government bus station, Nige booked us seats to Udaipur for early tomorrow morning and we headed back to The Blue House hotel. We had our good rickshaw driver stop at a liquor store we spotted so we could buy a few beers on the way. We checked into a room, enjoyed our beers on the rooftop, played some carrom and had our favourite masala tomato curry for dinner.