magical rajasthan: land of forts, rats & camels

so i wrote a blog entry yesterday but due to shitty computer circumstances, it's disappeared forever! so anyway, i left of in jodhpur which is now one of my favourite places in all of india. in the old part of the city most of the buildings are painted a brilliant shade of blue and it just looks so cooool. it's also got this big ass fort on top of a hill towering over the city and you get the best view ever from it, i must post pics soon. the fort was the best fort ever and it had a sweet ass audio guide that's got sound effects and music. c'mon, that's cool! the palace inside was gorgeous and it had interesting things like the handprints of all the wives of the maharajah who threw themselves into the fire after their hubbie died. oh the drama.

oh i love jodhpur. especially cause i bought 5 pairs of camel leather shoes there. and cause i had the sweetest room ever. we stayed in a havelli i think its called which is something like an old richly decorated home that was built by super wealthy people. but as you should have come to know, im not a very reliable source of accurate info. anyway my room was sweeeeet and it had one of those big window seats with cushions (i dont think im very good at describing things anymore. in fact my english has gone out the window. i say stuff now like, "we go palace 50 rupees".) and my room had a big painting on one of the walls. aaaaaahhhh.....

next stop: bikaner. there's not much in the town itself, we went to a fort which was i thought anticlimatic after the best fort in the universe (that would be the jodhpur fort) but we made the trek out here just so we could go to the rat temple. but before that, we went to a camel breeding farm which evidently produces something like 50% of all india's camels. there were a lot of camels. and then we went to the RAT TEMPLE (proper name...no clue) which is whaddya know, a temple filled with rats. as in rats running around, eating (in fact pilgrims go there to feed the rats and then after the rats nibbled on the food they eat it themselves. i did not engage in such an activity), sleeping on banisters, drinking milk.... the rats are holy, something like reincarnated dead people? i could be totally wrong but theyre definitely holy. thousands of rats! one of them ran over my foot and i screamed, a normal reaction i think, but i felt like a tool immediately. wierdest (and coolest) and temple in all of india for sure.

then we went to jaisalmer which is a fort city in the middle of the thar desert. in the middle of the town is a massive fort which is apparently the only fort with people living in it...in all of the world. i think. the town's really quite but inside the fort its like a tourist's playground, just shops, restaurants, guesthouses, all catering to tourists. not the best but definitely a stark contrast to the south of india! in rajasthan i have seen more europeans than in my entire life. apparently all of europe vacations in rajasthan, who knew. anyway the best part of jaisalmer is that i went on a camel safari! i was reluctant and didnt go first thing in the am like the boys cause i refuse to expose my body to that much discomfort via sun and camel, but i did go off in the afternoon for an over nite deal. (we opted to do a nontouristic safari which means its not on the tourist route and you dont really see any other people.) so there i was, just me, my camel and my little 10 year old guide who could barely speak english. all alone in the desert. no one as far as the eye could see. and yes, we were lost.

thank chubby ganesh i had my cell phone which astoundingly had the best reception ever out there! after me and eug exchanged a couple of calls and standing atop sand dunes just accepting the fact we were lost, we finally met up with the boys and their mini entourage. we set up camp behind some shrubs and romped around on the dunes. there was a sand/wind storm for a while (which actually kinda hurts) so sand + sweat = us covered absolutely with sand. it was kinda nasty. then we had dinner that was cooked over a campfire. saving grace, a man who walks from dawn till midnight from his village, came by and sold us drinks! id never loved warm pepsi so much in my entire life. hot water is not the yummiest thing to drink when you're hot already.

it was fun out there, id never seen so many stars before and i saw my first (and second, third..) shooting star! i also saw my first and hundredth dung beetle. yuck! they just roll camel shit around in the sand, i have no idea what theyre doing with it. and they fly too and land on you and it hurts cause theyve got pointy sharp feet or something. however, it was amusing to see them leap retardedly into the fire. one of our guides said its cause theyre suicidal what with life being so boring in the desert, no electricity and such. we just slept on blankets spread out on the sand and next morning more running around on the dunes. and then it was camels back to civilization!

then it was a dreadful 14 hour bus to undaipur, my current and last real stop in india. i looove udaipur. their big thing here is that the james bond film octopussy was filmed here. it's really lovely here, there are palaces on this big lake and it looks really nice. one of the palaces (the one in the movie) looks like its just floating on the lake and you cant even go out to see it unless youre booked in (which is thousands of $/nite) or if you're going out for the super expensive dinner. so we can just gaze at it from shore.

we've been having fun here and today was my busiest day in a while. i got up early for my 2nd ever yoga class, then i went to a 3 hour miniature painting class (i painted a cute elephant that i named kumar), then silver shopping, then us girls went to an all women and children festival! it was really kinda wierd but fun, they had carnival rides, popcorn, shopping and loads of women and kiddies. and in a few minutes, im gonna go get fitted for a coat that im getting custom made (actually me and krista are getting the same coat and we designed it ourselves) and im gonna pick up a salwar suit (oh god is that what theyre even called?) that i had made for me. fun times! so im off!