GWALIOR, MIXED INFORMATIONS

We arrive in the early afternoon in Gwalior, willing to find the bazaar, where the fabric merchant heaven is supposed to be located. The first encounter we have the city is a board behind the information desk saying “The easiest way to communicate is Hindi, the official language of the country”. We are a bit surprise, knowing that English is also officially recognized. But well. Few minutes later another board tells “India is a big country from Kashmir to Kerala”. Weirder. This hasn’t gone better, as we meet in a park a man who tells us indirectly that foreigners are not always liked here and that some people don’t like them. This comes quite accurate in the bazaar. A man grabs Cécile quite violently willing to touch her skin. Another man has to intervene to get him away. It leaves us with a strange feeling about the city, but we cannot say much since our transit is only a few hours long.

We learn also a new rule here: to never trust blindly the information given by the “Guide du routard”, the French equivalent of the Lonely Planet. There is rumour going on, from trustful sources, that the guidebooks are not checked every year anymore by those who write them. They call some locals instead of verifying the information on the ground. And these locals, pissed off by this attitude, give regularly wrong datas. Many times we have noticed that distances were inaccurate, so are prices… This time, we know that the bazaar is located next to a mosque, told by the book to be called “Jama Masjid”. This mosque does exist in India, but in New Delhi. So we end up going round and round, driven by rickshaws who take us to one mosque, but not the right one. The syndrome Zurich (from our first post) is going on. After 3 hours of useless walks and drives, we manage to reach our destination. It is worth all the trouble. The market is so beautiful, lively, human. Many small stalls full of vegetables, spices, fabrics, fruits... Incredible India.