The party city

There are basically two kinds of people who are here via Idex: volunteers and us internships. The few internships that are here (I only know of me and Tani) live with a local family. All of the volunteers live in the same place in a sort of a dormitory. Except that there are 4 persons in one room. And they pay for it about 200 euros per month, we don't. Which explains why some of them are quite interested to hear about options to move elsewhere.

Actually our (mine and Tani's) hosts get 5000 rupies per month (about 100e) for hosting us. We were told by Ninad that if we want to move live by ourselves, we could both get that money in cash. And Idex pays us salary 5000 rupies a month, so the possible 'own' place would be covered by those amounts.

Some....sight on my way to work

But anyway. We went sightseeing yesterday, some Monkey Palace about 10km off from the city. It was a palace are full of monkeys. Nothing too fancy but nice to see. There I met some of the volunteer people, who (not too surprisingly) were all females. After that we had a shower break and met in the same bar where I was on Friday with Tani (as there really aren't that many places which offer beer). There were eventually about 10-15 of us, which was really great as it was about time to meet other international people around here.

Girls having a spiritual moment at the Monkey Palace with a gayish-looking local spiritual dude

Part of the Monkey Palace

What happened? We ended up being the only Westerners there. Almost all locals left before midnight. Very few of the locals had any alcohol, they mostly smoked shee-sha and chatted. So basically if we go anywhere, we have to put up the party by ourselves. The local people reallyreally do not party or stay out late. Which kinda sucks. Well, the bar closed at 1am so we all headed for home then. But it was a nice evening, although the girls spent the last hour together dancing in a little clubbing room (no locals of course) where the music was about 120dB and me and Tani spent the time outside.

When I headed home, there had appeared a gate to block the entrance to the area where I live. The gatekeeper wasn't luckily too interested in me, just looked at me funnily when I told him that I'm going home and let me pass. And the gate to this apartment's premises was also locked so had to climb over it.

This morning my local dad told me that the gate with the gatekeeper is the only one of the 4 gates to this area which are open at that hour (with a gatekeeper). Lucky me. And of course he was also really worried about me staying up that late. And the local mom called me three times during the evening. The dad also advised me that I shouldn't be outside after 11pm, police start patrolling the city at that time and they might have some tricky questions for me. Like, what the $#"@? It's totally unusual for anyone to stay outside after 11pm? What the hell do these people do? How do they ventilate themselves, how do they have fun? What is this place? Must be one of the crappiest party countries on the planet. Well, it's not like I came here just to party, but it would be nice to not be the only one who is sometimes out later than 11pm. Besides the Idex people of course.

If I move in with Tani we already agreed that we get a fridge full of beer. That would also be a great place for some pre-parties for all the Idex people. Although I have no idea where the 'real' party would then be. Someone please let me know if you know of some nice parties around Jaipur ;)