Living in a Fairytale

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Castle in Dausa
Secret passage in our room
Elegant sari's

Today we travelled to Madhogarh where we stayed in a castle. Sounds so fairytale like. After settling into our rooms and then having a bit of free time to rest up we ventured out on a village walking tour where we saw the local cobbler, rugmaker, stones being polished for sari's, sari's being decorated with beads and sequins, bangles and kid's playing a cricket game (and then the guys from our group joining in and then subsequently having the ball go missing in the field...ball thrown too hard!) It was a pleasant walk through the village. They asked that we did not bring our cameras with us because all of the kids in the past were asking for their pictures to be taken and it was causing quite a problem.

Although we did come across some kids that were really friendly and wanted to say hello to us and shake our hands. After a while I think they were all eyeing us over to check out our jewelry and watches! Not a good feeling! We were walking a tad on the slow side and missed out on watching the sunset from the rooftop by just a few minutes. Oh well.

Before dinner us girls dressed up in some of "Cutie's" (Not sure of the true spelling of the "princesses" name) old sari's. She is quite the petite woman so it was interesting for some of us not so petite women! The first one that I put on was so funny. Guess it was one of the really small ones because the under top was so tiny it landed above my boobs...it was really, really funny. The second one I tried on was much better BUT since the side seam on the over top was let go it was quite "breezy" shall we say. lol Then I don't know how the women keep the scarf on top of their heads because for the life of me it would not stay there. Perhaps if I had a few bobby pins it would have done the trick??

After dressing up and everyone taking photos...the guys donning some wicked turbans, we eventually sat down for a scrumptious buffet dinner around 8PM if not later. Then near the end of dinner the music started and Jen and Nitin started in with the dancing. Then eventually most of us got up and we were dancing round too. It was a really fun night.

Tonight I was sharing a room with Robyn. It was really funny. The room we were in and I'm assuming all of the other rooms had at a minimum 25 switches per room! I'm not exaggerating because Robyn and I counted! It was really crazy though because there was one switch in our room that controlled both the fans and one of the lights. So it was either have the light and fans on or have both of them off. Well, having the light on was silly. But having the fans off was too hot. You’d think with 25 switches in the room that there would be separate switches to control the lights and fans! Eventually Robyn bit the bullet and unscrewed the light bulb. Thank you!

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Photos

Welcome!
What? I have something on my head? We received a warm welcome with flowers being tossed on our head and a bindi placed on our foreheads.

Dress up time!
We got all decked out in Indian clothing. Back to front, left to right: Brian, Rachel, Le-ann, Bonnie, Shauna, David, Mel, Jen, Tom, Donna, Craig and Robyn.