IV. I've Got It! I'll Seal Myself into a Wall!

Oct. 12 &13 -- Hi folks, Ayesha again. We arrived in Jaisalmer around noon. It's called the golden city because almost all the buildings are built using a beautiful local stone soft gold in color. Jaisalmer is on the edge of a desert so the first thing we did was hop into a jeep and drive out to the dunes where we rode a camel and watched the sun set.

This, as was everything, was not devoid of the tourist trappings: soft drinks at four times the price sold by charming Indian teenagers, our camel guide wanting us to give him our watches, and people willing to play music or dance for any money at all. Jono being Jono decided to do backflips in the sand, and on the last one managed a wonderful faceplant. His sweaty face and neck now had sand stuck to every pore, and that coupled with sand in his mouth, ears, and eyes made him a pretty traveling companion. We spent the next day exploring the fort, palace, markets, and havelis of Jaisalmer before hopping on a late night train that arrived in Jodhpur at 5.30 the next morning.

Oct. 14 -- Jodhpur is known as the blue city because when the city was burgeoning, the Brahmins (highest Hindu caste) painted their houses blue to demarcate them from the rest of the city. Today anyone is allowed to paint their house blue but the city is still heavily divided by caste lines. Jodhpur - like most Rajasthani cities - has a really impressive fort but this one had a wonderful audio tour to go along, and some insane stories like a man voluntarily sacrificing himself to be sealed into the wall of the fort alive, in order to break a curse that the fort would always suffer a shortage of water.

That night we caught a rickshaw to a restaurant but we were having some trouble explaining where it was to the driver. Soon a couple of guys on a motor bike stopped to help, followed by a few other people who were sitting around on the street, and soon we had created a mini traffic jam. No-one seemed to mind blocking the small meandering street, and as people honked and sidled past us in the fading light, we had several men all trying to peer at the Lonely Planet map and jab fingers at where they thought the restaurant might be. As if that wasn't chaotic enough, enter giant cow. We all made way for the cow and finally figured out where we had to go, but a simple conversation with the driver became quite the production. People in India always seem to have time for a conversation!

Oct. 15 -- On our last day of the trip we visited another impressive tomb called the Jaswant Thada and a more modern palace which will undoubtedly influence the blueprint of the one Jono will be building for me. We went to a weird and wonderful government run museum - see picture below.

We had a fantastically talkative man behind the front desk who wouldn't stop unless you walked away, but he was very helpful and sweet. He was typical of the average Indian man who wanted to better his life and was striving hard for it - by learning French to become a tour guide one day. The rooftop restaurant servers told Jono he looked like Amir Khan who is a famous Indian actor, and a man stopped us on the street to fall in love with me and proceed to talk to me for about forty minutes about everything under the sun. Jono stood there not understanding a word of the Hindi being spoken, and finally managed to wrangle me away. If anyone is going to Jodhpur and needs travel arrangements, a place to stay, any help at all, or a discourse on life, let me know as I have this man's cell phone number!

That evening we trundled to the train station to catch another 20 plus hour train back to Mumbai. Unfortunately for us this one had even more berths squished into the limited available space, but we were pleasantly surprised by how comfortable our journey actually was. We got off the train to be greeted by my lovely little smiley faced driver Hari and breathed a sigh of relief as we settled into the air-conditioned car, no longer having to make decisions and be on our guard. And so came the end of our little adventure north.

It was amazing to see the variety among just a few places in India: mountains, deserts, laid back people, high strung people, people who refused money, people who only wanted money, and donkeys, camels, cows, dogs, bullocks and monkeys on the roads. We traveled by plane, train, rickshaw, foot, tonga (horse drawn cart) and jeep. We spent about $240 each on all our hotels, food, monument entrance fees, excursions, Christmas presents and transportation within cities. It was a lot of fun and we're looking forward to another trip south, but before then we're probably going to take shorter trips to places closer to Bombay.

P.S: As we post this blog it's Diwali and fireworks are very loud when you're on the 20th floor and they explode outside the window next to you. Surprise! There are no firework laws in India and people are just exploding them at random on the streets. Jono is very concerned.