10 March 2025
Some days, life tests your patience beyond measure.
After a small dinner and a long day, Lisa and I were more than ready to crash. I had just begun to drift off when the world outside suddenly erupted. What in the…? At 10 p.m., loud crackers exploded everywhere. I flung open the curtains—fireworks were lighting up the sky. Bomb crackers were going off right beneath our window. Disoriented and confused, Lisa and I just burst out laughing. What was happening? (We later discovered India had won a cricket championship—and this was how the country celebrated. With sheer, sleep-shattering enthusiasm, well into the night.)
We woke up early, ready to move into the room we had booked via Booking.com. The night before, we were promised it would be available in the morning. But, as usual in this part of the world, the early hours brought no staff in sight. Eventually, we tracked down a man who seemed to be part of the guesthouse-owning family, but he didn’t understand us. He called his daughter to assist.
Her disinterested expression said it all. I explained, calmly at first, that we wanted to move to the room with two beds—exactly what we had booked for the next two nights. It became painfully clear that this room didn’t exist. The young, unprofessional host pressed all the wrong buttons on my already frayed nerves. The more I tried to explain, the more insistent—and rude—she became, claiming I hadn’t made the booking at all. I had the confirmation right there. She wouldn’t even look at it.
I snapped.
I felt bad later, but it was one of those unavoidable eruptions of frustration. With no way to resolve the situation, Lisa reluctantly paid for the one night we had stayed. I refused. It was unacceptable. At 7:30 a.m., we left, upset and desperate for a quiet corner, a decent coffee, and a new hotel.
But the day wasn’t done testing us.
Our tuk-tuk driver either didn’t understand us—or pretended not to. He drove us around the city only to return us right back where we had started: in front of a still-closed café. Our patience wore thinner by the minute. I pulled out Google Maps and made him understand, firmly, to just take us to the Blue City. We figured at least something would be open there.
Wrong. It was still too early. Almost everything was closed. How do you not find a coffee shop before 10 or 11 a.m.? This is one of India’s quirks I may never understand.
Eventually, we managed to drop our bags off at Zostel, find a decent coffee, and—after a few minutes of silent tears and deep breaths—we pulled ourselves back together and decided to explore.
Jodhpur, by now, had firmly claimed its spot as my least favourite city. But even here, beauty peeked through. The touristy “Blue City” section offered vibrant photo ops, charming little alleyways, and a few good laughs. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the names of the stalls and shops. A mobile food stand named The Rolling Stove had me in stitches.
Sometimes, all you can do is laugh through the chaos.
