Going Off the Beaten Track to India: DesignUp 2018, Car Horns, and Food Coma (Part II)
This is the second part of our India journey — go here to read the first part.
We’re thankful to God and to the super kind airport officers that still let us to board even though the gate was nearly closing. Bless them for the rest of their lives.
Now Off to Jaipur!
Two months before our departure to India, we have planned that we’re obviously going to go to another city in India other than Bangalore. We knew about India’s must visited Golden Triangle (Agra, Jaipur, Delhi), and some other smaller new-trending cities like Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. Again, priority is priority — we had everything on limit: limited leave balance and limited budget. Well anyway, being excessive isn’t good, right? *insert more excuses here*
Long story short, we chose Jaipur. First, because it’s a pretty in pink. Second, because it has almost everything we wanted to visit.
When we first searched about transportation options from Bangalore to Jaipur, we totally considered to book train ticket. We’ve already imagined how the authentic Indian train atmosphere we’re gonna experience later on, while wondering about the kid who got lost on the train, just like in Lion movie. But after finding out that we had to spend two nights at the train… No no no no, plane it is.
So we booked the cheapest ticket possible (it could be either AirAsia or SpiceJet which is basically India’s AirAsia), while still considering the time and homestay cost efficiency. Thanks to AirAsia for making our Jaipur dream trip, came true.
First Day of Our Chaotic Life
Ola
We arrived in Jaipur pretty early. Despite of the busy airport, the city has just woken and the day was just warmed up. That morning, now with a better preparation that we learned from our little incident in Bangalore (and Jakarta– Always double the traffic duration estimation from Google Maps), we took some cash from the ATM, ordered Ola to the guest house, and off we went without hassle. Ola is such a lifesaver, because they can provide 7-seater SUV that allow us travelling in the same car. Not only that, it gives more options like a cheaper Oto for budget traveller like us.
Jaipur is truly pink. No wonder, that Instagram filter bears the same name. Didn’t mean to exaggerate, but the city was a jaw-dropping beauty. We still remembered how we wowed at buildings and everything we passed by on our way from the airport to the homestay. The wow moment haven’t stopped yet, as we found out that our homestay was too cute! Everything was very Instagrammable, from the color palette, the flowers and leaves, the fence, the bench, to the rooftop. Undoubtedly, India was a perfect place for a group of everything-should-be-aesthetic people like us.
First things first when we arrived, as always, we hit the bed longer than we intended to. We started our day at noon having a late lunch on a rooftop restaurant (recommended by our homestay host) called Peacock Rooftop Cafe, eating some good Asian food (not limited to Indian food only) which actually good made our belly happy, going on city sightseeing (it’s so beautiful made us shed tears), and planning our quite late journey of the day.
Our first stop was City Palace. We separated into two Otos (a local three wheeler similar to Bajaj or Tuktuk) — Shylla, Danang, and Bouty in one Oto and Moga and Barata in the other. For the first time in forever, we got lost and separated. Our plan was to find the other team when we arrived at the venue. Yet, the city was so mesmerizing made us forget about each other for a moment, as we a thousand pictures by ourselves.
One surprising thing was that it’s very dangerous being pedestrians in Jaipur. Cars simply wouldn’t stop, even though there were people crossing the road, not mentioning oto’s abruptly maneuvers and sudden deceleration and stopping of fully loaded bus. Literally, Final Destinations in real life, with horns. Lots of it.
After finally finding each other (thanks to Telegram live location sharing), we decided to go to a cafe named Wind View Cafe. It’s located exactly in front of Hawa Mahal, one of the places to be in Jaipur.
Wanting to catch a glimpse of Jaipur sunset while chilling at Wind View Cafe, we were accompanied by the cafe’s manager along with one of the friendly waiters. They taught us everything we need to know as tourists in Jaipur, from where cheapest place to rent a car for a day to how to visit every Jaipur’s attraction efficiently. This cafe is greatly recommended: affordable menus, lovely views and humble staff that will accompany you!
Before the night came, as suggested by Wind View Cafe’s staff, we called back the Ola driver who drove us from the airport that morning. After dropped us at our homestay, the driver, Arvin, actually offered us to rent his car for the rest of our days there so we could commute from place to place easily.
We also ordered our midnight supper via Swiggy (equals to Go-Food). The food arrived was in huge portion, which made us pigged out and slept peacefully.
Second Day: Burning legs. Chinese Food, Please?
This trip was originally a plan B. At first, we wanted to have a trip to Agra because, well, Agra means Taj Mahal and Taj Mahal is the only reason one will fly to India, right? Turned out planning trip to Agra was such a pain in the arse. To go there, we had to buy train tickets, which requires IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) ID. To acquire those, we would need to register with our ID and other bureaucratic stuff. By those reasons, we decided to do a one-day trip around Jaipur.
After having Indian breakfast specially made by James, our homestay’s host, we started our journey to visit forts of Jaipur.
Our first fort is Amber Fort. It’s a huge fort which is situated on a hill. Inside there is a wide open piazza surrounded by buildings with mid-east architecture style. We spent three hours to walk through every part of the fort. Even though it was Monday, Amber Fort was quite crowded by tourists from all over the world. Lucky us, we decided to visit Amber Fort first and found out there is a pass ticket for almost every attraction in Jaipur, which was actually very cheap than buy it individually. It costed us Rs1000 per person for 7 venues, that took us two days to visit all of it. Pretty cheap, right?
From Amber Fort, we moved to another beautiful forts: Nahargarh Fort and Jaigarh Fort. After visiting these forts, designers like us noticed how every building (especially forts) in India were fixated into one same style and color. They’re basically different but have the same visual identity. It’s very Instagram-able. That’s why one thing all of us said most of the time in Jaipur: “Ini Instagram story gue udah titik-titik kayak Dian Sastro, tapi gue masih pengen tetep upload! Bagus banget jir.”
At night, we went to World Trade Park, the biggest mall in Jaipur. Why mall? Well, there were two things: one, the girls were running out their cosmetics for the next day, and two, all of us were really craving for non-Indian foods with non-Indian taste. We found a Chinese restaurant and finally ate dinner harmoniously. Guess what we found later at the mall…
Third Day: Getting Used with the Traffic & Car Horns
It’s our third morning in Jaipur. Got bored with homestay breakfast, now we’re relying on Swiggy to bring us some food with different nuance. Swiggy is a food delivery platform, similar to Go-Food in Indonesia. One difference that we love in Swiggy is the picture-in-picture feature, that shows the delivery status hovering above the other apps.
Our plan for that day was to go to the rest of Jaipur’s main attractions we could visit using our two — day ticket we bought earlier at the Amber Fort: Albert Hall, City Palace, Hawa Mahal, and Bappu Bazaar.
First stop was Albert Hall. Albert Hall is a pretty popular place, as it’s one of Jaipur’s most tagged places on Instagram. According to some reviews in Google, it is one of the oldest museums in India. Albert Hall is located strategically, as you can spot it from the other end of the road. Although it was closed when we arrived, but the yard in front of the hall is an attraction itself. Flocks of doves milling around the building was becoming everyone’s Boomerang videos objects. At that time, we discovered Danang’s hidden talent: he was actually a bird tamer (re: pawang burung). Danang could easily direct the birds to do what he wanted to. Thanks to his talent, we got lots of beautiful pictures of us with doves, all coordinated aesthetically. Albert Hall instantly became our most favoured place, as we visited it the most (three times in two days).
Other thing we learned from our trip to India was that Indians have their own way to capture a group selfie. It was so unique, since the selfies must include all members lining up and took pictures from head to toe, literally. Sounds easy, but really hard to master.
We continued our journey to City Palace and Hawa Mahal, where Barata suddenly became so famous. Almost every local passed him by, whispered among themselves while glanced at him. Some even stopped and approached him to have selfie together. Does Barata resemble someone famous? Turned out according to them, Barata resembled Sai Baba, one of the most prolific Indian guruses ever, so much. If we could get a dollar for every picture they had with Barata, we would be rich instantly.
We enjoyed roaming around City Palace and Hawa Mahal, until all of us starved almost to death. Suspected to have sixth sense to detect tourists’ wishes, one Oto driver abruptly appeared in front of us. He implored us to use his service to take us to his friend’s halal restaurant, which is (he said) one of the best in Jaipur. This kind of situation will always happen whenever you’re in India, where one random person will come to you and ask you to go to his restaurant/shop/etc.
Later, we spent hours strolling at Johri Bazaar to find cute Indian’s traditional dress (Kurta), because we thought it would be fun to do some dress-up in those outfits. Along the way, as we impulsively bought cute negligible stuff, ever demanding local sellers offered us things, almost from every direction.
Later at night, we went to a small grocery named The Country Store (recommended by our homestay’s host) to buy foods and snacks, before going back to Indonesia. Even though it was just a small shop, but it has everything — from snacks you couldn’t believe existed, to Middle Eastern premium dates, even Indian skin care brands.
Last Day: Bappu Bazaar is Love
We woke up pretty early as we wanted to make the best out of our last day. This day plan began with playing dress-up. When everyone is beautifully ready in their own kurtas, we went to the rooftop, to do the mandatory holy ritual of….
Spent 4 days in Jaipur didn’t really left us much more options of places to visit. Yes, spending 2–3 days in Jaipur is more than enough. Thus, we decided to go to a local cafe to have little reunion with our laptops. After 3 hours cuddling with coffee, some nice snacks, and not so nice works, we decided to go to Bappu Bazaar with Oto. Here in India, you can pay Oto and almost everything else, by just scanning QR code sticker with Paytm app. Hassle free.
Bappu bazaar is basically like other bazaar in India, where lots of merchants selling almost everything you can imagine. Funny thing was, Danang was followed by a man that sell Indian tambourine because Danang tried to bargain for price before. A tip: if you don’t mean to buy a good, don’t approach the seller let alone ask for price. Trust us, it does nothing good to you or to the seller.
In no time, we already got all our needs, yet we still got a few hours before our flight. So we thought that we could visit one more place. Guess where did we go?
It’s almost time to say goodbye to the city. Yet we realized that was so hard for leaving Albert Hall and its doves, our homestay, the bazaars, the forts, and everything Jaipur has offered us. Unknowingly, India has taken place in our hearts.
After saving all beautiful memories in Jaipur and Bangalore inside our heads, we finally departed back to Jakarta back, into the reality that awaits.
Indian Survival Kit for Millennials
First thing to do upon arriving in India is to install several ride-hailing apps. In our little adventure, we use Uber and Ola to order car and Oto for daily transportation, since taking public transportation here was somehow too ‘adventurous’ for us. We all know Uber is quite famous around the world, but Ola… who knows Ola? We accidentally found out about Ola after Barata was stumbled upon Ola website when searching for premium feature in Indian sites (He has a soft spot for premium features). Turned out Ola was pretty cheap compared to Uber with more diverse ride options like Bike, Oto, and Kaali Peeli (Indian signature black and yellow cab). But using Uber and Ola alone wasn’t enough when we didn’t know the directions. That’s when Google and Google Maps came to the rescue! To find places like museums, landmarks, and other places to go, we rely on Google. With their mighty help, we managed to start our journey in a completely foreign land of India. We were able to go to our conference venue, roamed around the city, went to several museums and landmarks, thanks to Google’s guidance.
Other essentials are Zomato and Swiggy, two food delivery apps to accommodate our needs of breakfasts or midnight snacks. Apparently, Zomato offers more features in India, like food delivery and Zomato Gold (which is recently launched in Indonesia). Therefore, our first Indian breakfast was delivered by Zomato courier. Funny thing was, most foods offered in the apps were Indian food. It was pretty hard to find Southeast Asian food, let alone Indonesian. Although, Indian food was good, with Moga and Barata falling hard for it.
Here’s a list of things you’d better know before visiting India:
- First, for Indonesian, get your India e-visa — which you can apply onlinne. Try to apply on working hours and voila! Your visa will be issued the day after. And the best part is: it’s free!
- Since we went to India for a design conference, make sure that you bring your notes and stationery (although you might get them from the conference’s swag). Oh, and business card! It’s important for you to get more Instagram followers. Also, save enough space in your memory card to take photos or, maybe, videos of the speaker’s slides, so you can re-inspire your soul later on.
- Next, have yourself a prepaid SIM Card to stay connected (and bragged about the trip, hehe). There are two ways to acquire Indian prepaid SIM Card. First, buy a SIM Card on your country, before you fly to the destination (some of us bought it via Traveloka). Secondly, you can get the 90-days SIM card at the local airport upon arrival. It costs you for around INR 800 (equals to IDR 170.000). Both SIM cards would take half to one day to be activated. The advantage of buying local SIM card is that you can use Indian apps, since they require us to register with local phone number.
- List down all of your destination carefully. Our recommended cities are Agra, Jaipur, Delhi, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer. We visited Bangalore for the sake of the conference, and had our leisure time in Jaipur.
- No need to bring so much Rupees in hard cash. The rate of money changers, both in Indonesia and India, are considerably higher than withdrawing from local ATMs in India. On your arrival, you’d need cash only to buy the SIM card at the airport (if the counter doesn’t have EDC machine). Other than that, you can buy everything with your debit card and withdraw later from local ATMs. One thing to note, make sure to withdraw from the ATM that have the same logos your ATM card also have (VISA, Mastercard, or Cirrus).
- Even though the transport fare is quite cheap in India, we’d still recommend you to choose homestay, especially the ones near touristy places in India. The less distance to touristy places, the less time you’d spend in traffic. Only with IDR100K — IDR200K per person per night, you can already stay in a super comfy & cute room. You can take a look at our homestay in Bangalore and Jaipur.
- When arrived in India, please be careful when choosing transportation to your homestay. If you choose offline taxi, the driver might drop you at another hotel that has a marked-up price. They even force you to stay there. Useful tip: only use Uber or Olacabs everywhere.
- Try Oto, Indian’s local ride (like Bajaj in Jakarta), with open windows to experience the aroma of India. You can order it both with OlaCabs or Uber. Also try Panipuri, Indian local snack mixed of potato, flavoured water and a taste of Indian hands :)
- If you’re traveling with a group of friends or relatives and don’t want to mess with financial problems (who pays for who, who debts who), having the Splitwise app installed on your phone is the solution. Voila! Worry no more.
Aaaand… that’s all. It turned out to be a super long post. Thank you for reading this far. Also, special thanks to Bukalapak for letting us to go to India, to learn about design and see the country’s beauty. It’s so overwhelmly cool that we got the opportunity to learn, not only in the office, but also in another part of the world.
Interested to be one of us? Shot your best resume and portfolio to careers.bukalapak.com.
