(Spoilers, of course.) Tonight's show featured a race to Jaipur India, known locally as 'the pink city'. The city was painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales in 1853. The show focused on the crushing poverty of the city, and it is crushing. We're cynical enough to figure that the show's producers are playing off of the popularity of 'Slumdog Millionaire'.
Sometimes the race features teams that have been held back by different difficulties in such a way that there is fairly large time gaps between groups. Not so with this one as they were all bunched at the beginning. The race all took place within Jaipur so no one got that far ahead or behind. I like that.
The highlight of the episode for me was a task where they had to transport food and water for camels. They were given a bucket for water and they had to figure out that a stack of baskets was to be used for the feed. At least one woman (and maybe a second) missed the baskets and just stuffed the feed down her shirt. It looked incredibly uncomfortable.
Not a bad one tonight, but it lacked the beautiful scenery that they often get. The commercials for the lead in really drove home the poverty angle and it was the obvious hook. Sometimes they show the contestants acting like the cliche 'ugly American' in poor areas but this time they showed sympathy instead. It made for a nice change.
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