Jodhpur – Omelette War

Gopal Hotel, 150 Rs luxurious double-bed room

After being down for quite a while, the server of my blog is working again today, so I can update the story again. Spent the last 8 days in Pushkar, and just arrived yesterday in Jodhpur. Very lucky that we could find a very spaceful luxurious room with the price that suits our budget.

Jodhpur, the blue city, seems quite affected by tourism competition among hotels and restaurants. Every single unit related directly to tourim business, has at least a dozen of guest books to prove how the guests, foreigners, tourists, etc feel about their service. In every guesthouse we visited, the owner will be busily showing the books to us.

Not only hotels, but even omellete stalls have guest books!!! Under the gate of clock tower, there are two omelette stalls. One has big board written in big colourful letters: “Recommended by Lonely Planet”, and the other is not. The former, with half a dozen Western guests enjoying the omellete there, seemed had a better business after the recommendation of that very traveller bible. But for us, who prefer to avoid everything listed by LP, the second one was more attractive.

This shop is quiet, there was only one Japanese woman eating and crying how delicious the meal was at the same time. She thought that we were Japanese and kept talking in her language (now at least we can forgive the Indians who always regard us as Japanese couple). The young cook, was so enthousiastic to see us coming. Not showing the menu first, instead he kept showing the books filled by signatures and messages from all languages on earth.

“Can we have the omelette first, please,” cried us starving.
“You are Chinese? We have Chinese people coming also!” the boy was showing the books while looking for messages in Chinese hyerogliphs to us.
“OK, OK, but we want omelette….”
“We are not listed in Lonely Planet yet, but really, many people like our omelette,” the boy was enthousiasticly showing us the second book.
“We dont care about guide book. We prefer to have omelette first.”
“See, this is the first book we have since the shop started. Many many tourists come here. See!” said him with a thick white book, also filled with messages from different eaters from all countries in the world.

I bet that the other stall which was recommended by Lonely Planet has more than a dozen books.

The omelette itself is really nice, with ginger, tomato, and masala. Just cant imagine even omelette stalls like these have such a strong war atmosphere between them. And those guestbooks for omelette stalls (stilll a century to go for Indonesian martabak stalls to have the same)

“Belum cuba omelette dia, sudah disuruh tulis guestbook ini” (“Havent tried the omelette yet, but the owner has asked me to write this guestbook first”) wrote a Malaysian eater in the guestbook. The cook boy was proudly showing us this message that he has a Malaysian customer before, without understanding what he was writing. The Malaysian then praise how delicious the omelette was, in 3 languages: English, Chinese, and Malay.

The cook boy told us that the war between these two stalls is not only this. Sometimes the competition even got harsher with much hotter atmosphere, when the muscles also talk. Yes, fighting for customers!

I was also asked to sign in the guestbook. I guess that I was the first Indonesian writing here.

And we also got the business card!
(Road side omelette stall with business card…., colourful, complete with telephone number and email address! Kaki lima stalls in Indonesia are going to do the same?)

To add more about this war in tourism world nowadays, even the rickshaw drivers in Jaipur also have guestbooks written by the foreign passengers!!! (Becak drivers in Indonesia have to work harder to get ones)