It doesn’t really matter how well travelled you are, or think you are. Every time you get to a foreign place, you seem to have to go through an oligatory hazing period during which you are reminded that you’re a tourist like everyone else, no matter how exciting your plans may be. You get talked into going to (or avoiding) certain places, buying things you didn’t need(where am I going to store all those bangles?), and  generally spending more than you had budgeted for. 

We (the two of us and the man at tourist information in Delhi) have decided to take a little vacation through a modified golden triangle before we buy bikes and start the tour.  Instead of the standard Delhi-Jaipur-Agra, we will do Delhi-Jaipur-Bhujarat.  We have travelled west, by car to boot.  This is a decision I am mostly for. It’s been maybe 10 years since I’ve visited Rajasthan and since it wasn’t on the original agenda so I’m probably responsible for the course change. I can’t deny my fascination with camels and elephants and deserty landscapes, and have already have had several wins.

Luckily we haven’t been out of New York long enough to be unable to compare prices of things there and here, so there’s a lot of easy justification for the spendiness of this early detour. I’ve heard it takes a day per every time zone change to fully recover from jet lag with that, I think it will be while, as I write this at 5 am, having been awake since three.   Jet lag is a mysterious and sometimes wonderful thing, and to be
embraced if you can get over it. Now it’s a matter of waiting for the free breakfast to be served so we can get on with our tourism.