Bikaner.

Took my first autorickshaw (otherwise known as tuktuk).

I was on the train and some guy has an app that turns his phone into a little piano. And he just wangs it out when he’s next to me on the train and starts playing around with it. Headphones? Who needs headphones?! Not a care in the world. I love that kinda stuff. It’s all those tiny little things that dazzle me, and I guess Indians may see the same in me. I think I laugh too loud for people here and a lot of little things like that.

I'll give ya another example. I saw a woman using a towel to dry her hair. Something as simple as that can be mindblowing for me, that’s how deep the “everything is different” thing runs here. She rolled it up, held each end, bent over, then hit it against her hair like a skipping rope. I was shook. "People really dry their hair like that?!" I thought. What a wild world we live in man, that’s all I can say. But hey, seemed to work for her.

So yeah, the 7 hour and five minute train arrived 2 minutes early and was only 2 minutes late. The hotel… well, homestay owner was there 15 minutes early to pick me up and drop me at the place. ￡2.

Arrived in Bikaner. It's uh, like super Indian. I thought Delhi was Indian, nah mate. This is Indian! Clothes are even more super colourful, there are less people. A cow walked by the door when we were inside. The guy sold poppadoms and motorcycle lights, and a hand tool of some form, and internet routers. It's almost as if you had taken like 4 random things and just copy pasted them all over a single room. It was pretty cool to see.

Bikaner is really different, but in the perfect way. Much more peaceful, still smells nice here but it’s that wonderful dusty kinda smell. So it turns out this is basically a house, and I have my own little attached apartment. There is a restaurant next door, and he told me they’ll deliver right to my room. I’m always wary of recommendations, but I looked at the menu and was shaken again.

All my hard work through the menus in Delhi. I come here and it’s like half different! 20 types of bread alone. This is gonna be some hard work, but somebody has to do it I guess.

It’s about ￡10 a night here, and for a nice little apartment, I’ve gotta say… pretty awesome. I almost didn’t want to come here when I saw the rules said things such as only females allowed in the kitchen. I thought to myself, jeez, if these geezers are that conservative, they’re gonna run in terror from me. But I guess that was some misunderstanding because he said I could use their kitchen. Still though, knowing I have to ask for permission, and with the insane array of food, yet again… I’ll probably just eat takeaway every day. Especially with how elaborate all the food is to cook anyway…