Trifling Tourism

These idle musings took on a more personal dimension in the past couple of weeks, because I was travelling through Rajasthan with some friends from the US. The experience was an eye-opener. Changing money at the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, it turns out, involves filling forms in triplicate and even including the serial numbers of each hundred-dollar bill before a loutish assistant bank manager will deign to stir himself. The paucity of tourists sadly sometimes brings out the worst in the private sector as well. A couple of my friends in Hong Kong recently cancelled their booking at the Oberoi’s acclaimed Rajvilas hotel in Jaipur when the travel agent told them the surcharge on Christmas Eve was US $300—in addition to the already exorbitant $300 they were paying for their room.