Rajasthan straight out of a fairytale
- meganagathe
- 12 févr. 2018
- 4 min de lecture
During these last few weeks in Rajhastan we have been terrible at keeping up with the blog and now its come back to bite us!
The guide says that their is more history in Rajhastan then the whole of India put together, I am not sure if thats true but it certainly feels possible! Our first stop in the region was Udaipur, also known as an Indian Venice. Udaipur was a very nice city to just stroll around and enjoy the beautiful views around the lake. The main attraction is its incredibly big palace, which looks like something out of a fairytale! All the rooms are extravagantly decorated, with many colours and details! In the evening we find a very nice place to eat where the cook is very excited to make us try her inventions of unusual currys such as banana curry! She also invites us to come back the next morning to have breakfast at her house! There she tell us of her dreams of opening her own restaurant rather than working for her parents as they don’t pay her and will pass on the business to her brother. This is our first real insight into the complexity of Indian families and the important power parents continuously have on their kids lives and how it is very morally hard for them to stand up to their parents!
Our next stop is Jodhpur, also known as the blue city. We love it here and agree later that this was our favorite city in Rajhastan! The city is composed of a very big fort overlooking all the many cobbled streets of old houses painted in blue! Our first stop is to visit the fort, which is incredible! It is hard to get over how beautiful every room is, all the wall carvings, paintings, windows…it is nothing like what we have back in Europe! The city of jodhpur is also incredibly nice to wonder around in, with many small alleys, with fruit vendors or sweets! We go back to our lovely homestay completely enchanted, not knowing what was coming next...I woke up the next morning with a terrible case of food poisoning. Although we had planned on leaving that same day to our next stop, we decided to delay it another day. Whilst I was half dying in bed, Agathe got to become very good friends with the homestay owner Sunmid and spend the day hanging around the kitchen getting fed lots of indian snacks!
The next day I manage to crawl into the bus and pray that time goes by very fast, believing that I will probably be fine soon and that it will be cool to have arrived at our next destination: Jasailmer, the golden city. Jasailmer is a town inside a fort. The buildings are all in a sandy stone colour with amazing carvings. But since I am still quite sick, all I see of the town is the view from it from our hostel. After four days of feeling really sick and not eating, I’ve reached the point where a hospital is needed, we speak to our hostel owner who informs us that we will need to go back to Jodhpur as they are no good hospital there…so off we go, 5 hours back into a car and off to the hospital. Although at the time it didn’t feel like it, it might have been a blessing in disguise!I get admitted overnight at the hospital and get pumped loads of fluid through me and thank goodness get to keep Agathe by my side for the Night. Next morning is Agathe’s birthday, which starts of with a bang: waking up on a hospital couch!
I eventually get discharged and we go back to our homestay where Sunmid has cooked for us very good food for the stomach and easy to eat, we feel very well taken care of. To top it off he has found out about Agathe’s birthday and organised a big cream cake for her, which according to Indian ways gets stuffed into her face! The blessing in disguise comes when Sunmid offers us to join him at his cousins wedding in a few days, we are so excited as an Indian wedding has been on our bucket list before we even got to India! In the meantime we decided to go and visit Jaipur the capital of Rajhastan, known as the pink city! There I decided to make up for the terrible Birthday I had given Agathe and organised a day of pampering for her toped with a yummy meal in a very nice italian restaurant where we even got a glass of wine! Having been on the road for 3 months made a plate of pasta and a glass of wine taste like the equivalent of caviar and champagne (I am guessing, since Ive never actually tasted caviar!!)!
After also having visited the beautiful fort, palace and bazaar’s in Jaipur, off we are for the third time back to our favorite city in Rajhastan to experience an Indian wedding. We are so glad to have come back, when we arrive for the first evening of the wedding we get dragged by many of Sumid’s cousins into some crazy indian dancing and are treated as part of the family. The first night of the wedding is called women’s dancing and where the tradition is for the bride to dance for the groom. Everyone is incredibly dressed and we also get to taste a lot of yummy food. During the day as we wait for the next night of festivities, we go to a hindu temple which is celebrating the birthday of a god. This only reinforces our impressions of indians’ knowledge of how to properly celebrate.
Everyone is dancing, singing whilst the priest is throwing petals, water and colour pigments on the people! Before we head back to the wedding, Sunmid has organised for us to borrow sahris from his cousins, in order for us to better fit in (!). We not only get dressed up traditionally, but also get our hair, make up, jewellery done up! The second night is the official wedding night. The groom gets to the wedding on a white horse and the bride wears an even more impressive dress than the night before. Once again we are in for a lot of dancing and eating!! As always leaving somewhere and people we really like is hard but we know our adventures must go on! And so we set off to our next stop: Deshnok.
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