sacred texts

jodhpur, india

i love lonely planet. my bookshelf at home has a space reserved for tattered copies from journies past and i look forward to adding two thick, dusty, and worn editions from this summer to my collection. their writers have saved me considerable time and money through their research and have directed me towards remarkable people and places i never would have otherwise encountered (and helped me avoid those i would never want to encounter). as india is less a country than a continent, having a 1200+ page how-to guide written in an easy to follow manner is an irreplacable asset. however, an experience in jodhpur has reminded me that not all benefit from objective travel advice.

one nugget of common knowledge that lonely planet has shared is that if a rickshaw driver suggests that your hostel is full, dangerous or has burnt down, it is so that they can direct you to another where you are charged a higher rate and they pocket the commission. something to be aware of, certainly, but just a few firm responses can have you on course to your destination. the big problem is that it is mentioned for every major city in rajasthan (probably elsewhere, i just haven't looked), creating almost a sense of guarded paranoia in traveler's once they descend the bus stairs or exit the train station's turnstile. these warnings have a way of eroding the confidence of external suggestions, even when they don't come from rickshaw drivers, and reinforcing trust in only those hostels and restaurants gracing the pages of the guide book.

and so when i arrived in jodhpur, i rebuffed the first few offers from the man waiting at the bus station. i told him i already had a place booked (little white lie), but soon i saw that he wasn't a rickshaw driver. then, he said those sweet little words, '150 rupees (us$3)'. even if there was a commission involved, that price couldn't be beat. so my rickshaw followed his motorcycle and soon i saw that right by the suggested guest house where i was going (from lp) was his own guest house. bed, bathroom, lock, i'll take it.

soon we were chatting on his rooftop, soaking in the night sky as mahendra pointed out mehergahr fort and other jodhpur points of interest. he went on to explain how he meets arriving buses and trains, hoping to convince tourists to at least look at his guest house, even saying 'i pray to god that we will be in next lonely planet'. an appearance in lp, or even its poorer, red-headed bastard cousins footprint or rough guide, can mean the difference between prosperity and penury. to have your hostel listed in the sacred text is to receive the seal of approval that will be seen by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands in a given year. and they will come. and to be omitted is to almost cease to exist.

radhika guest house is lovely, but it has no shot of appearing in the next edition of lp in my opinion. its setup is just a little too close to the literal term 'guest house' and not to the industrial connotation more appealing to the editors at melbourne. however, radhika has a shot through word-of-mouth and i intend to do my own share of trumpeting on its behalf. because while other guest houses may have more table space and a wider menu, they don't have the extended family i have stayed with for three nights. mehergahr fort and the main market in town were both fascinating, but they couldn't hold a candle to the three hours i spent on the rooftop watching sonny and gautham, 14 and 10 respectively, kite-fighting. if i hadn't been staying in a residential community, i wouldn't have seen the zigging, zagging, bobbing, weaving, ducking, and diving of dozens of kites cast against the pre-sunset sky. i think that alone is worth looking outside of the familiar and trusted pages.