The Worst Exotic Marigold Hotel

A while ago I watched a film called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, about a bunch of coffin dodgers who travelled from England to Jaipur, only to discover that the delightful hotel they thought they had booked was horribly run down and everything was crap. Some of the fogies fucked each other and one of them turned out to be off with the queers, but that’s not important.

I’m staying in a former palace, that obviously hasn’t been maintained for half a century. There are 200 rooms, but I’m the only person here, half the building is crumbling apart and nothing works. Last night the light in my room exploded, the tap started squirting water everywhere, and drunken Indian men were pissing outside my window. When I went to reception to see what could be done, I was greeted by the retarded dude who works here, sleeping on the ground like a damn dog. Today, when they came to fix the light, it took four of them half an hour to work out they didn’t have the right globe, at which point they gave me a bedside lamp instead. It’s a crap place to stay, but if I’d known how close I’d go to being killed today, I never would have left.

The film showed Jaipur in a favourable way, as an exciting and exotic land. I’ve found it to be dirty and ugly, and inhabited by the absolute scum of the earth, who ensure that this city is not one that anyone should go out of their way to visit.

It’s hard to walk five metres without some fuckwit yelling out, “Hello sir, where you going?”, or having a street kid try to rob you, or some knob in a stupid shirt start yelling and trying to start a fight for no reason. Every single person was watching my every move with dead eyes, and it all felt even crueller than Delhi, which is saying something. The people here are rotten, rude pieces of shit, and the few monuments there are to see are made nearly inaccessible by these cretins.

Poverty is everywhere, and there’s a constant tide of beggars to get through. There’s also a frightening number of deformed people around, making a walk through Jaipur feel like a real-life zombie film.

The scariest part of the day came after climbing up a mountain to check out Nahargarh Fort. It’s a lovely old building tjat offers stunning views over Jaipur, but it’s also sadly rundown, covered in graffiti, and drowning in broken glass and rubbish. Anyway, I was checking it out when I came across a bunch of peasants who were catching pigeons and eating them. It was fucking horrible, and when I went to leave, the peasants started following me.

I’m a big, tough dude, so I took the only option available – I ran away like a little girl. They chased me, bit their diet of city chicken let them down and I got away, fleeing down the mountain and into the streets. It was terrifying, and who knows what would have happened if they’d caught me? One of me is worth a few hundred pigeons, so they would’ve been eating well for months.

Jaipur also has cows, pigs and camels roaming the streets, which led to the funniest part of the day – getting attacked by a goat. It was funny because I caught it on camera. One second I was dancing with the four-legged fuckers, then one turned and tried to bite me and I screamed like a child.

I’m off to Goa tomorrow. India, this is your last chance, don’t fuck it up.

WHERE THE FUCK WAS YESTERDAY’S ENTRY? I had a post almost ready to go yesterday, but a power surge destroyed my Macbook’s power cable, and my battery ran out before I could post it. Shame, ‘cos it was awesome. I’ll post it once I get my computer up and running. This is also the reason why I don’t have many of my own photos in this entry.