Rajasthan Yatra.Day 1
Visiting Rajasthan and witnessing the Pushkar Fest has been a dream that has been in my mind for a long time. It is prolonged for many reasons. That wish was fulfilled this time. On the last 31st, when I tried to book a ticket for the Rajasthan trip, the Kochi-Jaipur flight was delayed for seven hours in Delhi. There is a non-stop flight from Bangalore to Jaipur. Then decided to take a ticket and catch it straight to Bangalore. After leaving Kumali in the evening, he slept soundly on the berth of the Airbus and reached Kalsi Palayam in Bangalore at 7 in the morning. When you go to the permanent lodge, Metro Park, the manager Salim is at the reception. Being from Mangalore, Salim speaks fluent Malayalam.
When I said that I will leave at 12 o’clock, I was given a room for 1300 rupees for 600 rupees. The hotel is not very old so the AC room is very clean. After watching the news on television for an hour, he took a bath, changed his clothes, and reached the road
Reached Kerala Hotel Kalpaka and had bread and egg curry. There are many Malayalee hotels and business establishments here. All Kerala food is available here. The cosmopolitan city of Bangalore has 10% Malayalis and 25% Tamils of the population. The flight is at 3.15. You must check in before 2 pm. I vacated the room at twelve and walked a hundred meters to the nearest metro station. Alighted at the Majestic metro and boarded the airport bus.
AC bus is only thirty-four kilometers from here to the airport but the ticket price is 220 rupees. The bus reached the airport in an hour. He saw the check-in gate and sat down on one of the chairs in front of it. The flight departs on three legs. There is more than an hour. After visiting the shops at the airport, we found our Chakka Upperi(Banana Chips) packed in a shop. I don’t usually buy anything at the airport, so I bought a packet of Upperi for 80 grams for Rs.98. The ban may be due to the high rent and furnishing costs and low turnover of airport shops.
It seems that if the shops in the domestic terminal are made to sell a few more cheap goods, more business will be done. Indigo is a non-stop flight that departs on time. After flying for two and a half hours, landed at Jaipur Sanganir International Airport at 5.45. It is a beautiful airport. In 2018, it was selected as the second-best airport in the world in the category of airports handling less than fifty lakh passengers. One of the busiest airports in the country and the only international airport in Rajasthan, the airport is now in the hands of Adani.
I walked outside along the path where the copper plants were growing and blooming. Pleasant weather not hot at all. It is only a quarter past five, but darkness is beginning to fall. In Jaipur, the sun rises at 6:30 in the morning and sets at 5:30 in the evening. The day is shorter and the night is longer. Jaipur city is thirteen kilometers away from here. There are only two small thatch shops, one on the road outside the airport wall. Only tea, some small sweets, and dozens of pan masalas with different names are for sale. After buying a cup of tea, he got into one of the nearby autos and left for the city. No time to waste waiting for the bus. My plan is to reach Ajmer tonight and stay. Approaching the Jaipur bus station, we saw the beautiful sight of LED lights in the color of the national flag, which was encircled by the legs of the street lamps placed in a row on the median in the middle of the four-lane road. The auto driver took 250 rupees and showed the bus station and left. It didn’t seem too much when looking at local auto hire.
In the middle of the road, the Jaipur Metro is crossing on top of the pillars. There is also a metro station near the bus station here. I walked onto the footpath with my shoulder bag. After a short walk, there is a foreign liquor shop on the left side, where you see a lot of traffic on the footpath. Liquor sale in Rajasthan has been given to private individuals through e-auction. Now there are 7665 foreign liquor shops. I am standing in front of one of them. People drink without any hindrance sitting in front of the shop, in the closed shop next door, and on the footpath. Ordinary people sit in a circle on the dirty ground of the footpath, talking loudly and joking. Neither the police nor the moral police nor the locals even cares. A man sits on the ground and kneads the dough among the liquor bottles and their caps scattered nearby. He is an employee of a nearby shop that sells chapatis and some other Rajasthani delicacies. It is past seven o’clock now.
It is a distance of 140 km from here to Ajmer, so I decided to take a bus to Ajmer and then go to Ajmer to eat. Deciding to have a beer and a meal, I went to a shop marked English Wine. It is a privately owned shop. Buy a Tuborg beer and get a chilled beer for Rs.145. The MRP ban itself shocked me. This is my first experience outside Kerala. Last month at a shop in Andhra100 per beer bought more. He drank that beer from one of the crowd. Deciding not to eat anything from that shop due to its dirtiness, I walked forward and reached the bus stand. I didn’t see any food shop there. Although it is a bus station where many interstate and long-distance buses depart including Delhi, the stand has no accompanying facilities. After buying two fruits and a bottle of water from the nearby shop, I boarded the bus to Ajmer. Not the shutter on the side of the bus which looks like our KSRTC’s Venad bus on the outside. It is a movable glass. Seats are better than KSRTC.
Staying in Ajmer tonight and leaving for Pushkar tomorrow morning, I sat on a side seat thinking about Pushkar Fest, the world’s largest camel fair.
