Advertisement
Published: March 20th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Well...it's been a while since we have updated you on our journey through india. Last i left you we had been neatly persuaded to get our chakra read, buy gems and visit 'the guru'.
Since then we ventured south west to a place called Pushkar where we caught up on sleep, relaxed by a hotel pool and moseyed our way though the markets. We had awesome food (including tibetan momo's/dumplings) and met a couple of aussie ladies who became our buddies for the duration of our stay. I would have to say. the most facinating thing we saw here was a young calf urinating in the middle of the road (this I can handle) but then a well-dressed middle-aged indian man ran behind it, cupped his hands to catch the urine....and wait for it......drank from his hands!!!! Who would have thought, someone would actually choose to do that. I was so shocked/speechless and Clare would have been too if she wasnt so concerned with the way her acidic pineapple juice was hurting her tongue where she had burnt it on a momo the earlier that day 😊 I found out later that apparently (dont quote me on this) it
view of lake pushkar
we hiked up a ridiculously steep hill to a temple to see the sunrise and monkey watch is very pure and has detox/healing properties.....Id go a wheatgrass shot and some codliver oil anyday!!!!
From pushkar, we got a 12 hour 'delux' (yeah right) bus to jasailmer. Knowing this was a long journey, we booked a sleeper position in the bus, little did we know we were going to be shoved in two SEPERATE glass coffin-like cages where we could not even sit up in for the whole duration of the freezing cold trip!!!! We couldnt even talk to eachother....and to top it all off, the glass was not tinted, so we were being stared at by every man and his indian dog like we were in a display case at a museum.
Arriving in Jasailmer was a god-send as was being able to be vertical again. Our main aims in jasailmer was to go on a camel safari and to partake in a festival of colour, called 'Holi'. After a day wandering in the old fort, the bear and I were easily persuaded (India: 234, Clare and helen: 0) to do a two day camel safari the following day. An 8am start and a nice BIG breaky (of course the two porkies were unsure when
we might eat again so they stocked up on pancakes, banana porridge and a banana lassi -like a smoothy) we got in an extremely bumpy jeep ride to transport us to the edge of the desert......after 30 min in the jeep we were a little concerned with how long our lassi's were going to stay down. A Quick introduction to our camels....Mine was called Paddam and had the best mullet I have ever seen on a camel, maybe even the only mullet I have seen on a camel. Clares had big balls and froth around its mouth like it had had a big night out (and this is not just like coaches, I mean gallons of what closely resembled egg white...mmmm egg white!).
The safari was great, but let me tell you, after two days of sitting on a camel, squatting behind trees and eating with our right hands we had had just enough. Clare had to side-saddle the whole of the next day due to R.C.I (repetitive camel injury) - and both closely resembled bandy-legged John Wayne. Clare's guts have taken a slight turn for the worse since the safari and appears to have self-diagnosed herself with Giardia
- not fun for clare, and not so fun for me who has had front-row seats to every giardian performance.
The other great aspect of Jasailmer was Holi a festival of colour where every town and city in India shuts their shops and comes out of their homes to throw coloured powder on eachother. Clare and I woke up, still a little sore from our camel injuries and thought we'd better put our old clothes on to walk to breakfast just incase we got a little bit of colour on our clothes....as soon as we walked out of our hotel we were like lambs to the slaughter!!! A black moustache was drawn on us both, and bright coloured powder was thrown on our blond hair, caked on our white faces and squirted (with water pistols) into all of our orofice's. We took our cameras in plastic bags, so the whole day was documented. By the end of the colour fight, clare and I were unreconisable - very funny event!
From Jasailmer we headed to Jodpur (home of the horse riding pantaloon and location of Liz hurleys indian wedding) and from Jodpur we moved down south to our last
point of call in Rajasthan, Udaiper. Set on the pituresque lake Pichola, Udaiper was a great place to explore. Easily persuaded by out tuk-tuk driver (India:406, Clare and Helen: 0) to stay at his mates hotel, we were nicely suprised with the mention of a swimming pool to work on our tans (- we are sick of getting asked if we are english.....not that there is anything wrong with that London Buddies😊 Some good curries and a few days by the pool has worked wonders to prepare us for our next (and most anticipated)Indian location: Mumbai (Bombay).
Stay tuned 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.04s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0414s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Leighroy Brown
non-member comment
The camel meets its match!
Starting to think you girls fell off the edge of the earth! Loving these blogs. Stop teasing us we want more entries! That camel shot cracked me up. Paddam finally met its soulmate :) Leigh