Sticks and Stones...

Looking back on my trip to India a few "funny" things happened.  At the time, I was a bit uncomfortable or one might even say worried, but now I can sit back in the comfort of my own home and chuckle.

Incident #1
In my last post, I talked briefly about the people who were blocking the main road from Agra to Jaipur.  As a result, we had to wind through villages to find our way to our destination.  At one point on these back roads, we were blocked by a group of young men.  There was one, in particular, who did not want to let us pass.  Mr. Khan got out of the car and tried talking with him, asking him to move his moped from the middle of the road.  The group of men refused to move, but many of them were laughing (which can either be reassuring or more frightening if the laugh is that crazy, sadistic kind...you know the one I mean.).  Beth and I sat in the back of the car trying to figure out what was going on.  It came down to this:  the man wanted us to pay him for the use of the road.  He figured since the main road was blocked, he might as well benefit as well. There was no budging him and we weren't going to pay--Mr. Khan was adamant about that.  Then out of nowhere, a little old lady approached the group of young men and began hitting the leader with the stick she was carrying.  She was yelling that she was going to march down to his house and tell his father what he was doing and that he better get a move on!

I wish so badly that I could have captured the old woman hitting the man with her stick, but I wasn't that brave at the time.  Instead, I got the leader driving away on his moped.

We drove down the road a short distance talking about what had just happened, when we came to the second plot to charge us money to travel on the road.  This one, however, was being executed by children and was not complete yet...we were lucky :)  I think they were planning on building a wall of rocks so no cars could pass.

Incident #2
Beth and I were trying to find the perfect stores in which to shop.  What we had seen so far had either been touristy with lots of really inexpensive items (aka cheap looking things that will break easily and are just plain ugly) or stores that carried massively expensive items (and what I considered to still be ugly).  So we had been hopping in and out of the car and running into stores for a while now.  At one of the last stores we visited, we got back into the car after checking out the store for a only a few minutes, when a man with a very large gun approached the car.  He and Mr. Khan began arguing and Beth and I didn't utter a word.  We could not figure out what they were fighting about...but it was clear they were fighting.  At one point, the man with the very large gun reached into the car and yanked the key from the ignition, breaking the key.  When his hands started grabbing the wheel, Beth and I froze.  Finally, the man with the very large gun seemed to back off a bit.  Mr. Khan took this opportunity and wrangled the key back from the gun man and was able to insert it into the ignition and off we drove.  Beth and I couldn't get the words out quickly enough, trying to figure out what had happened.  Mr. Khan, looking bored, explained that he wanted money since we parked in front of the store.  Mr. Khan told the man with the very large gun (did I mention that his gun was very large?) that he was not the parking police and he refused to pay.  I don't think I would last a minute alone in India!  I apologize for not taking a picture of the man with the very large gun, but felt it was better to return safely to my husband and children instead.