I'm home! What a lovely thing to be - after the colour, chaos and creativity of Rajasthan, the cold clear skies and my own warm bed are very welcome!
What an interesting month it has been - I have been thinking long and hard about how to blog about it - after the Big Train Adventure of three years ago with John, I wondered about giving India the same treatment? A chronological place by place account? But I am going to try it this way instead - and see if it works -
People
Animals
Places
Textiles
saving the best till last - I'm going to offer you a four part journey with lots of pictures and I hope you will enjoy it!
here we go
The Amazing Indian Adventure Part One - People
Old Delhi - cycle rickshaw driver - anyone who can cart me around for 15 minutes or more deserves more than 50 rupees! (about 70p in UK)
The Craft Museum in Delhi where the exhibits are guarded with great care and attention
The Puppet Makers of Jaipur - 250 families live in this shanty town on the outskirts of the city and make the traditional puppets that their families have been making for generations, the men carve the heads from mango wood and the women ...
...make the clothes while the children gather to have a look at us - these two white women - and see if they can squeeze a rupee or two out of us (no)
The Jaipur Kite Festival was held while we were there - a colourful affair with hundreds of small tissue paper kites and as much action on the ground
I wonder how you score points for Kite Flying? The winner is the Master Blaster with badges to show how great a kite flyer he is! (It must be a boy thing?)
Here are a gaggle of kids waiting for a bit of fun - Martha and I were in Ranakpur, the only time we stayed in the countryside. We went for a walk to a nearby lake when we attracted the attention of this bunch - especially the two bigger girls who came all the way with us because they suspected, quite rightly, that we might not be as good as them at running backwards at speed!
watch out Martha! a prickly bush!
we had a lot of fun with these two
The little girl on the left is wearing her school uniform while the twirling girl had lots of necklaces and bangles and local dress. I really wondered about their lives and wished for the hundredth time that I could communicate more effectively with people.
I read William Dalrymple's book Nine Lives while I was there. The third story in the book tells of the tradition of dedicating one daughter in some families to prostitution in honour of a religious belief that this is the best way to serve the gods. This is not only an ancient tradition, it is happening right now all over Rajasthan, despite government attempts to reeducate families. After I read about this, I visited a project in Jaipur called Ladli where hundreds of children, mostly girls are given a home, an education and training as an alternative to the street lives they were living. This is going to be the charity the shop will support in 2011 - for £300 we can sponsor a teacher for a year. Makes sense to me.
I'll put a donation thing on the shop site if I can work out how - or I'll just stick a box on the counter - I have some of their beaded things I can sell for them too.
This is the sweet girl who greeted me gave me a glass of chai and showed me round. She has lived in the project for 4 years. Her story would make you weep. Yes - I think MAKE can pay for her teacher this year.
Lets lift the mood a bit now with Deepak, the smiliest, happiest person I have met in many a year!
He runs the Gateway Cafe near the City Palace in Udaipur and we had many a friendly snack with his lovely company. They have a great coffee machine too - a rarity in India - at least the bits we were in, where Nescafe rules supreme. Although we were only in Udaipur 4 days, we ate with Deepak at some point on all of them and always received such a lovely welcome.
I just missed photographing this sweetie with her arm tied to her leg, her father's attempt to stop her crawling into the traffic inches away from where he was carving soapstone. Childcare.
And the last of this rambling People Post
this bunch of boys off to their .....
I'm not sure if this is the best way to share this journey with you - but I'll stick with it - it has been lovely for me to remember some of the faces we saw and the stories we heard. It can only ever be a snapshot, a glimpse of the things we saw and did this January, I hope it is not too little?
One billion people in India. Amazing.
next time - Animals - if there are a billion people who knows how many animals there are?
Thanks for reading
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