track our trek

if it ain't one thing, it's another with accommodations in india...places that advertise hot water showers do not always deliver. in 2 1/2 weeks, we averaged one hot shower per week. the rest of the time, we soaped up under cold wall faucets used for filling buckets. there are always at least 8 light switches, most of which do not seem to be connected to anything, as there are rarely more than 2 light fixtures in a room. power cuts are frequent and irregular. we stayed in several places in the course of our trip, some better than others...as tourism is his business, satish gets a commission for bringing tourists to certain restaurants and hotels... often we were able to stay in hotels that would normally have been outside our budget because of satish's network of contacts. the nicest place we stayed was in pushkar where we paid 500 rupees for a room that normally costs 1200...here we enjoyed one of our 3 proper hot showers. but our favorite story is that of "feel at home" guesthouse in jaipur...a new place on satish's itinerary, we were trying it out to see if it would meet his strict standards for bringing tourists...it is run by the ladiwala family in their home. when we first saw the room, we thought, "sweet!" it was huge and pretty comfortable and the bathroom was cleaner than any place we'd stayed yet by far. then while satish and daryll returned to the car to get our bags, ravi, the twenty-something son stayed behind with me and asked me for a kiss! "please, just one kiss? you are very pretty. just one kiss." ...are you crazy?!? he wasn't threatening, and he clearly seemed to think it was an appropriate request...i flatly refused and waited until dp and i were alone in the room to tell him what had happened...needless to say, i'd have left immediately if i were traveling by myself...and that was the last time in the trip dp was more than 5 seconds away from my side! half an hour later, while we were in the room talking, i looked up and saw ravi's face pressed against the frosted glass transom window above our door...are you crazy?!? daryll opened the door & he jumped down off the plastic chair he'd been standing on..."you need chair?" he asked with a head wobble. what?!?! we made sure we were locked in tight and resolved to tell satish about it in the morning. satish talked it over with ravi (who was apparently very contrite) the next day & he and his sister alka then spent the next day and a half trying to compensate by over-feeding us constantly.  "please, take!"the entire family seemed concerned about how comfortable we felt & kept insisting that we write comments in their guest book. and they seemed convinced that dp and i would come home and single-handedly jump start their business by telling all of our american friends and travel agents about them...yeah right...jokes! for the rest of the trip, it was the running joke..."we just want you to feel at home!"