India is turning into a love hate affair for me. In the last couple of days it’s a bit more of a love affair, but really, seriously, at the beginning, I was quiet happy to hide away in our hotel while Mark went exploring. People can be so friendly, and it can be quiet spectacularly beautiful.
However, and it’s a big however, it is also chaotic, dirty, smelly and loud. The men can be grabby (I find my butt is a tempting target, poor Mark has been feeling a little unattractive, no one has grabbed his bum!), the rickshaw drivers frustrating and haggling every day for everything tiresome. Did I also mention it was loud, smelly and really really dirty!!!
The things I have really loved is meeting other travellers (a real step up from the isolation of a campervan) the food, the price of everything (except beer which is more expensive than Europe in this state), how colourful everything is, and absolute sense of fun and joy you can get from a place as loud, smelly and really really dirty as India.
I guess the best example for that last statement, is that we’ve timed our arrival to hit India’s wedding season. Over here, a wedding starts at the crack of dawn with (from what I can work out) the groom heading to a temple and praying (very loudly through a PA system). This is followed by extremely loud parades through the streets with a drumming band (very cool) and a dude playing a keyboard badly on an incredibly loud, distorted, tinny PA system. The groom is on horseback, while his party dances on the street in front of him. He often looks like he’s about to panic and bolt of on the horse, while his friends and family (the women dressed in the most amazingly colourful saris) are having a great time. This will go all days until sunset, when the real festivities begin. I haven’t seen a wedding, by I’ve heard them, they are loud, and carry on until 3am, sometimes 4. You don’t sleep. Not even Sleeping Beauty sleeps through these parties!!!! The best news is, you finally get to sleep at 3/4am, only to be woken at 5.30 when the next groom preys at the temple you didn’t realised you were next too when you booked your room the night before!
Rajasthan is famous for palaces and forts. So today, with two lovely Swiss girls, we hired a taxi for the day and drove out to an absolutely beautiful fort, and then an amazing Jain* temple.
On the great filtered water saga, I’ve become a little less fussy about the taste of water, mostly it’s find, however it this town it’s just plan horrible, so it’s bottled water until tomorrow when we leave for Mt Abu.
*An India religion where members are forbidden from eating meat, but also root vegetables because insects may have been hurt when they pick them. It is a step up from Fruitarians, who only eat fruit and vegetables when they have fallen from the tree/ plant, so as to not injure the tree. Wikipedia probably explains the Jain religion a lot better than I could.
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