Dec. 16, Delhi
Greetings from Delhi. We actually wrote a long post last night, but then somehow the Indian internet connection lost it. We arrived in Delhi yesterday around noon after a pleasant, but dusty 20 hour train ride from Jaisalmer.
We did a 2 night camel safari in Jaisalmer through Ganesh travel (highly recommend them) with Raju, the "Camel Man". We had a great time, though Liz freaked out a bit after having got the worst, most stubborn, farty, disobedient juvenile male camel that liked to run others over and stomp a lot. The 2nd day Liz opted to ride with "Camel Boy", "Desert Man", "Maharaja Man" - Jeff. Jeff earned a lot of nicnames for being able to control the camel - get it to sit, stand, harness it, hobble it, and make it turn, run, etc. by making weird mouth sounds. For most of the trip he also wore a red tye-dyed turban.
The first day we had about 20 people in our group which was fun as we heard great travel stories. The 2nd day, it there was 3 of us, Maggie an American from Kansas who is doing volunteer work south of Agra in an orphanage who needed to take a break, us and Raju. The 2nd night Raju had us rolling telling us stories of his other trips. We especially liked the one about the woman who liked her food super spicy which ended up giving her diahrrea and then when she used up all her toilet paper, Raju politely tried to help by suggesting she use sand, water, or her turban which is what she did.
The night time stars were amazing. We saw shooting stars about every 3 minutes. The moon was really bright and would light up the dunes. There were also a lot of desert dogs that would follow us hoping for scraps of food and then sleep by us at night. Also - Jeff's favorite - the large black beetles which would invariably end up crawling over us.
December 13th, Liz's Mom's 60th birthday, we left the desert for Jaisalmer. We were lucky to witness a huge wedding procession outside the fort at about 7 PM. It was really neat - they had boys walking around them carrying halogen lights which were connected together and then to a big battery so we could all see the action. The camels at the front were draped in gold fabric. Then was the noisy Indian rock music blaring from a truck followed by the groom on top of a donkey. Then about 8 drummers. This man who looked like money would throw money on the ground and the drummers would kneel down to bite the money off the ground - often missing and licking the pavement - while not missing a beat. After that were the ladies all dripping in jewels, painted with henna and in gorgeous embroidered lenghas and saris. There were also fireworks. After they passed we ate dinner and kept hearing fireworks in different parts of the town.
The next day we saw the wedding procession again. The groom was still on top of the donkey, but this time the bride was in a covered carriage being carried by men. We asked a shop keeper how much Indian weddings cost and he said that at a minimum people pay about 50,000 rs (about $1200) and can go up to 2-3 lak (1 lak = 100,000 rs)).
We did a little shopping in Jaisalmer - bought a gorgeous hand woven bed cover and Jeff bought another turban.
That's it for our news. We fly to Bangkok on December 19th. Right now the hotel is reconfirming our airline tickets which we hope are fine as it seemed like a process to buy them in Kathmandu - took a few hours which lowered our confidence. Happy holidays! Love Liz and Jeff
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