India

Yesterday we made the steep 800m walk up to the Savitri Temple. Past the water, chocolate, biscuit stands touting at the base of the mountain. Past the holy men pushing incense. Up and up counting the perfectly cemented steps until we were continuing up and up along rocky ground.
At the top, like all good tourist sites we past the cafe and cd stand, belting out Indian tunes. Not even atop the highest mountain can you find solitude!
Beyond the sounds we wondered past family and extended family of monkeys. One was hanging from a pipe, sucking drops of water from a dripping tap. Another sat, looking out at the view while scratching his balls.

Today started a little bleak, sleeping past our yoga date, the morning sky sheilding the sun with a blanket of clouds. It brightened up when we were invited across rooftops to where 6 women and a child were singing cheerily and making papaad. It is for Rhada, one of the girls here who is soon to be married. She looks barely 18, with a girlish figure and straight white teeth held together by braces. Maybe 300 patties, lay out to dry on yellow and fluro pink saris, only cms away from similarily shaped cow patties.

We asked many questions, but like so much in India, they reveal more questions. Once Rhada is married, she cannot make papaad for one year. ..Why?... "Because that is how it is" explains our hostess. There's not much questioning of the abundance of superstitions and traditions as far as we can tell. What we do know is that they have an invaluable function in binding together these communities, strengthening bonds between family and friends.

Today we love India. This is Pushkar. We have splurged spending $5 each per night and we have secured our very own Marharaja room. A clean neat room adorned with ceiling lamps of red, blue, purple and green. A comfortable bed with new-ish looking warm doonas and above a large mural of an indian wedding ceremony. The lush, sheer orange curtains give us privacy when drawn or allow in copious amounts of window light when we so desire. We also have our own bathroom and it's an unusual bonus to have the shower head pointing away from the toilet seat.

It's been a time of taking it slowly and taking it in. Yoga classes inside the walls of a temple and long walks up to mountain views as well as lazy reading hours in our rooftop hammocks. The only occasional interruption comes calling across rooftops from a cheeky singing voice - "Australia! Australia! Australia!" When we do turn around we are met with a huge Indian grin, beaming from beneath a golden yellow sari. We are yet to take up her invitation - "My house... come!" as she points below.

It's going to be hard to leave this one...

Oh the heavenly hum of the train keeping us on the one smooth track to Jaisalmer. We arrived at the station at a chilly 6.30am feeling sure of ourselves and where we wanted to go, only to be quickly swept into a troopie by a man claiming to be from that very hotel. Of course, after stopping for chai to sweeten the abduction, we were taken to his hotel instead. At 50 Rs per night ($1.40 between us!!) how could we argue. As days passed there came more and more reasons why we should have argued, but we won't go into that!

This town is cleaner than most, but not without piles of rubbish swept neatly to the side of the road waiting to be lit on fire. The sand castle-like Fort was much less impressive than Jodhpurs and a different experience entirely. Full of market stalls with more touts and personal homes all of which are being monitored by the world heritage watch for fear of crumbling.

A wander through the Jain Temples inside the fort left us awed at the architectural skill, then dismayed at the Holy men who tried to get us to pay them for broken bits of information. They stood in front of signs painted in red saying "Do not give money to the Holy men". We are yet to discover what spirituality Westerners come here to bathe in, as the only role Holy men seem to have is to swindle you of your rupees. We felt like Lloyd might have a thing or two to teach them!

We have finally had some beautiful experiences with people though, meeting a young family of jewellers.

We had conversations of cultural exchange with 4 of these 8 parentless boys as the youngest cooked a feast of Thali and wasn't satisfied until we were stuffed. We spent many hours at their home and frequenting the store for cups of chai high up in the fort overlooking the city, highlighted our stay.

We landed in Mumbai to an atmosphere as thick as Australian bushfire season. But the only fire here is the burning sun penetrating the concrete structures of derelict buildings and bouncing off shambles of metal holding together kilometres of slums. It's true, India is an onslaught on all of the senses.

Organised chaos at it's finest. The car horns never stop, their way of creating lanes by beeping their presence to the cars around them. It's incredible that it works, but it does. It's like the ebb and flow of an unstoppable shore, except that the sound is polluting and drilling.

One night in Mumbai was enough. Each step attracted another beggar, each question provoked a request for another rupee.

On to Udaipur in the hope of finding our love for India...