A Visit to the Jaipur Post Office

We had one final thing to do in Jaipur: ship home all the quilts we had collected over two weeks. I saved a whole day to do this since I knew that shipping things from an Indian post office could be a long and complicated process, and it was worth it. We spent almost three hours moving from line to line, collecting different forms and getting the packages officially wrapped: each piece has to be professionally sewn up with cotton and sealed with wax, to secure the contents but also to make them look extremely sketchy. When I ordered some large packages of fabric from India last year, I got several raised eyebrows in the lobby of our building and more than one person asking if I had received a giant shipment of cocaine. Luckily, I shipped them to my dad's office building this time, so he will be the one getting raised eyebrows.

We spent the afternoon waiting our turn, and eventually said goodbye to the packages in exchange for what we thought was a tracking number, but turned out not to be. In a few weeks, we will either see that all this chaos is actually extremely efficient, or the packages will never arrive. Fingers crossed we will see them again soon. And next time I am in line at USPS, sending those flat rate boxes is going to seem so easy.