Paras Mahal Udaipur

Moonlight Marbles
Mondlichtgemurmel

An mehr**en blauen W**betafeln mit dies** poetischen Aufschrift (nur d** ob**en und es handelt sich um eine von (zu) vielen Marmorfabriken) fahre ich jeden Morgen vorbei, auf meinem 1-stuendigen Weg in Richtung Negedia, einem Dorf in mitten momentan gruen** Huegel und Feld**, von dem ich auss** d** Schule leid** nur den Chai-Wala kenne.
Das hat mitl**weile nahezu etwas routini**tes, sich**lich ab** eingespieltes.
Ich habe ja ...

... as long as I wanted, eventually turning back and finding a different route back to the area where I was staying. This practise soon became tiresome and so for the next day I devised a plan to visit the main post office and Folk art museum a little way out of town. Of course what looks "a little way out of town" in the guidebook map resembles something rather different in reality, especially in temperatures of 45 degrees. Armed with a bottle of water, however, I ...

... country. Only three other pairs of backpackers were on our flight, and while I have seen many more Westerners than I did in Mumbai, there are nonetheless fewer than I had been warned there would be. After dropping our things at a guest house Vijay booked for us (a sudden onslaught of concern for our well being yesterday led to a booking spree throughout Rajasthan that continued into this morning) we headed out to explore. We wandered first down to what ...

... Then everything went to Hell in a hand-basket. In spite of my subtle prompting, Barbara said she wouldn't go back into the store unless Muhammed made an effort to get her to come back in. And the insulted Muhammed said he wouldn't offer her the 'beautiful' piece unless she stepped back in his door. It was a stalemate and I was the real loser.

Last night was our final night with Barbara. We wanted to celebrate our parting with a fine dinner in a quiet setting and chose ...

... that we wanted a creamy one for mum, a pink one for my sister and a reddish one for my gran, he set about decorating the floor with literally hundreds of pasminas, pulling them out of the wrappers frantically and throwing them at us wildly. Bemused and overhwelmed, we sat there letting him do our job, knowing full well that we had already decided on the three we quite liked, and even when we showed a special interest them, he ...

... scratch at my shins, just below my knee, grunting with the effort. My constant inner monologue may also have something to do with the fact that I am really not a New Age type of guy, and find it particularly difficult to fathom the sudden and comprehensive change that some westerners undergo when they arrive in India. All the Indians wear jeans and t-shirts, but they wear only traditional cotton pantaloons, shirts and headscarves, and are often covered in ...

... dark, with our packs on, on foot the wrong way around a roundabout to find his rig. A suspect situation which could have been a stitch up and a dangerous place to be walking in alot of traffic so we aborted him and walked away to find another guy. Then the guy comes screaming up behind us in his rickshaw and still wants the fare despite us ditching him earlier and so the fare negotiations began again. Then while driving through the city towards the Hanuman Ghat area ...

... beautiful, and we were so happy to be there after a very surreal night on the train. We had booked a standard room, but I managed to convince Dan to let us look at the "deluxe" room, and then bugged him until he agreed that we could probably afford the extra 4 pounds a night for a balcony, four poster bed and one of those really cool "rain showers". We spent most of the day doing nothing, trying to catch glimpses of the news and still completely shocked by ...

... with animals scavenging on them and in one town, built on a small slope, the sewage channels are blocked and there is foul water running all over down the road. At midday we see a few rocky outcrops and then it is flat again as far as you can see. By mid afternoon we are approaching a high hilly area and we stop at a big 'Jain' (an Indian high religion) temple, the largest in India. Built in 1439 out of marble, it has 1440 individually carved pillars and four ornate roof ...