Blogs from Rajasthan, India, Asia - page 285

On the trip back from the holy lake we stop in at a silk shop and are introduced to an eldery Indian man who we think goes by the name of Guru Nadar! Anyway he sits us down and gets his entire stock of silk scarves out for us to peruse and somehow he gets into the story of Brahma and the Brahma temple!! The story goes on for a good 30 minutes - only trouble is the Guru doesn't speak the best English, so me and Michelle sit there dumbly, smiling and nodding in all the right places!!! After the lenghtly story - which we eventually understand the guru asks us our names! I go first and the guru chants some religious song and counts on his fingers - never knew my name had such ... read more

January 27, 2007 - Part 4 I took a few random “snaps” as we were leaving Jaipur to head back to Delhi. (That’s what the Indians call photographs, “snaps.”) We decided to stop at a roadside vendor just on the way out of town to grab something to eat. We hadn’t had any food since breakfast and we were very hungry. They love potato chips over here. Every single roadside vendor sells them. It goes without saying that they have their own flavors, but Michele was able to get us some plain Lays potato chips. She bought our driver a bag of Masala (Indian spice) flavored one. Two bottles of water and we were good to go. While Michele was buying the potato chips, our driver used this public telephone to make a call. I have ... read more

So we arrive in Jaipur and finally - our prayers had been answered - thankyou everyone for keeping your fingers crossed - we have a DECENT hotel - thats right you read right, we're actually living it up in a hotel!!! Its clean and everything, even has hot water and toiler paper is provided!!! O the joys!! And with this new found hot water, i finally wash the linen trousers i have been wearing every day since i got here - yes i do ming, but the state of these Indian streets, i didn't want to infect all my other clothes!! And yes Sarah, i used the pegless washing line - and this wasn't the first time either - yes thats right readers i have done more than one load of washing and yes the parents ... read more

Well unfortunatly it was our time to leave Jaislamer. I will definatly miss it. We bought a bus ticket from our hotel and im pretty sure they ripped us off. We paid $5 to be on a local bus that everyone else paid about 50 cents for. We were told it was a deluxe bus and it was far from it! It was so disgustingly dirty and it was packed to the roof with people. Usually the bus stops every couple hours for a washroom break but not this one. We asked how long it was stopped for and the driver said 15 minutes so i decided to go to the washroom. As i come out the bus is slowly pulling away after maybe 2 minutes. Everyone is pushing to get on and off the bus ... read more

If you can afford a good seat and avoid the crush that you can expect in the cheaper classes, trains are a great way to travel in India. The distances are pretty large and generally the roads leave a lot to be desired. In addition, if you are over 5’8’’, you probably already know that you simply don’t fit in buses… The first hour of bus travel for me consists of trying to find a vaguely comfortable position, this always fails miserably and after another hour of intense pain all feeling leaves my lower body. The problems really start when it’s time to get off the bus, this requires at least half an hour of massage and light exercise to ensure you don’t fall flat on your face when you try to stand up as ... read more