Blogs from Rajasthan, India, Asia - page 340

Hello everyone - I hope you're all doing well, Well, we are having an adventure round Rajasthan at the moment!! We have arranged to do a 12 day tour, with a driver taking us between places. The journeys have been long, but it is interesting to see the countryside and people going about their normal business. Rural life is in stark constrast to the desperate begging and squalor which seems to surround the main tourist sites. We are learning lots of interesting stuff from out driver, although there is the occasional comical language barrier - he has quite a strong accent and his brilliant joke about a big white sikh temple near Agra being the Taj Mahal fell a bit flat when we believed him, started oooing and aaaaahing, then realised he was joking and felt ... read more

The Pushkar camel fair has unwittingly become the ‘face of India’ to the Western world. How do I know that? Any stock photo site when searched for ‘India’ will throw up colorful images of Rajasthan - camels featured quite prominently among them. Turbaned camel herders, comical camels silhouetted against the sunset, the proverbial Rajasthani dancer wearing a brass nathni …I definitely owed my camera a trip to Pushkar. Moreover, it was just days away from the famed camel fair. It was a pity we couldn’t make it between the 12-15th (the actual days of the fair); the call of our mundane corporate lives proved much too strong ;-) We left the General’s bungalow in Jaipur after a ‘propah’ English breakfast, stocked up on film rolls, and took a bus to Ajmer. The journey took three ... read more

I'm losing track of the date and, most definitely, the days are all starting to blend, but we left Jaisalmer via sleeper train to Jodhpur at about 11:00 pm and arrived around 5:00 am. We navigated through the mass of sleeping people at the train station; this is common at most train stations. There is, nonetheless, ample room to manuever through the station without problems. We were beseiged by the usually auto-rickshaw drivers; my strategy at this point (especially at 5:00 pm on 5 hours sleep) is to tell them to leave us alone, which usually does not work at all. It usually results in renewed aggressiveness. My next step is to completely refuse to deal with the aggressors, walk outside and get some guy who's just standing around towards the back of the queue (if ... read more

Part 7 January 10 Bikaner, India It is surprisingly hard to connect to the low income lives of so many people in India. I hesitate to use the word poverty, as this seems somehow a more Western notion that is both judgmental and clinical at the same time. Poverty as most in the West know it indicates an income level that is inadequate, but still can support a standard of living in the developed world that seems to far exceed the basic standard here. And poverty in the west usually implies a degree of destituteness that rarely has any sense of vitality or vibrancy that somehow slips through life in India more often that one would expect. By outward of appearances of where we have been (admittedly not even a tiny slice of this large and ... read more

We arrived in Goa this morning and are staying at the Ronil Beach Resort in Baga, Calangute- it is really nice with air conditioning which is must as it is 34 degrees out here ( sorry to make you guys jealous!). I have had a hectic few days so the intention is to spend the next few relaxing on the beach, with a few cocktails and perhaps some water sports! So if you don't here from me for a while don't worry! P x... read more