Atta Girl 1

Awww man, I love my family here so much. I’m so sad to leave. We’ve hung out a lot, just sitting around, chatting, me looking after the really little kids (along with the older girls), playing games, going out exploring the streets.

It’s amazing how attached we’ve all become to each other.

The younger girls are always so keen to play, or dance, or just generally be silly, so we’ve been playing games I used to play with my own girls, or making up new ones.

When it’s really fun, Sonam and the older cousins are keen to join in too.

Games have included the usual whirling and twirling games, like them sitting on a large cane chair, and me swinging and pushing it wildly around the room. Or just grabbing them by the hands and swinging them wildly ‘round and ‘round.

Or the trust game, where they have to fall backwards without moving their legs or feet, until I catch them. It took them awhile to get used to that one - sorta goes against the grain. I also tried “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?,” but that wasn’t a big hit.

Last night we all came up with a great game that involved throwing a plastic wastepaper basket lid, from a distance, at a collection of various sweets, bikkies and coins. Whatever you managed to cover with the lid from your throw, you got to keep.

The game started out by us trying to throw coins into a tiny paper cup.

Then the girls suggested that sweets might be a good addition to the game (surprise surprise), and so I gave them some rupes so they could get a collection of stuff from their shop downstairs.

We laughed our heads off,  and I’ve promised them we’ll have another round tonight, my last night here.

The littlies watching on

People Of Colour

Rajasthan is a swirl of colour. Its brilliance is everywhere.

Yeah, plastic flowers

TV reporter, probably doing a story about the upcoming election. There’s a big rally tonight, the last day of campaigning, before the actual state election takes place in a couple of days.

Last eve in the Blue City

Setting up for the rally. I didn’t stay for the talkfest.

Filtered water station. I always re-filter it with my hiking squeeze filter before drinking. Just in case.

Bikkie shop. Look yummy don't they.

I might try this style

Milk delivery back at the shop

Indian version of the bum gun

Sleeping routines are completely relaxed around here. For everyone. School starts at 10am, and the kids seem to go to bed whenever they’re tired.

The so-called developed countries could really learn from that. Having well-rested and relaxed kids is, I imagine, supremely conducive to effective learning. Let alone relaxed parents, released from the torturous morning school/work routine.

At night here there’s random noise at any time, including loud music all over the place, till well into the night, people chatting or singing loudly, dogs barking their heads off and fighting each other, firework bombs going off, you name it.

No one cares. People just sleep through it all.

I don’t care either. After a year of living like this, I never really think about the noise at night at all. If I get woken up, I just go back to sleep. But actually I tend not to get woken up so much anymore, I must be getting used to it.

The kids and I played for hours in the evening, we had so much fun.

As usual.

Dance action.

The girls were really keen to take selfies on my phone

They’re the sweetest and funnest kids ever.

I miss them, we still keep chatting and messaging each other.

Jai Sri Ram!

It’s slightly cloudy.

It’s the first time I’ve seen the clouds since I came down from the mountains in Dharamsala some weeks ago.

I’m sitting in a little garden café in Pushkar, a holy town built around the sacred ghats of Pushkar Jheel, a small but beautiful and auspicious lake, that sits right in the middle of the old town.

This town is famous throughout India, as it’s the only place in the country with a temple to Brahma, one of the three supreme Hindu Gods. Most of the temples and ghats here were built in the 1700s, or later, as the Muslim Mughals, who conquered this area in the 1300s, destroyed all the earlier ones. Meanies.

Pushkar is also an auspicious place for Sikhs to visit, there are two famous gurudwaras here, one dedicated to Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, and another to Guru Gobind Singh, another important Sikh teacher. A gurudwara is a Sikh temple, as well as a general gathering place for Sikhs.

And, not to be forgotten, Pushkar has been a hippy hangout for decades, as it’s small, beautiful, sacred, and such a chilled place. As a result, the town also has loads of cafés serving everything from pizza and veg lasagna to magic lassis.

It was a 5 or 6 hour journey to get here on a local bus, with no room for my backpack except on my knees, on my already scrunched legs.

I was really sad to leave Jodhpur, and say goodbye to the family I’ve become so close with so quickly. For me, sad goodbyes are probably the hardest part of long term travelling. And there seems to be a lot of them.

My friends in Jodhpur are poor. I mean, they’re not the poorest family in India, by a long shot, but they’ll work their whole lives and never really get ahead, materially. They’ll always struggle on a rickshaw driver’s wage, and a tiny shop income. They’ll never own their own place, and never have any way of saving money for the sort of luxuries that you and I can enjoy without any thought whatsoever.

The very least I could do as we said our sad goodbyes was to hand Zigarh, the dad, a wad of cash. It’s enough to make a difference to his family, at least for awhile. He cried. So did I. He’d already given me a gift for each of my daughters, and told me to bring them all here, to visit his family, and that we could stay with them as long as we wanted, and he’d take us all over Rajasthan.

So gracious.

Cute gifts from Zigarh for my women-girls

And then he took me to the bus station.

My Reservation Cum Boarding Card. Don’t you love it. My fare was 220 rupes for the journey, about 4 bucks, for a journey that took most of the day. Public transport is subsidised here, as fuel prices have gone through the roof in India, just like everywhere else.

Another rattler

Nice to be in some hills again. The landscape around here is dotted with rocky outcrops and small ranges.

Ajmer bus station. Ajmer is a bigger town, maybe about 15 clicks from Pushkar.

A sad scene. It looked to me as if this guy had been considering suicide, by jumping from this tower onto the busy train line below, but was talked out of it by the other two guys.

India’s suicide rate has been growing for decades now, and, horribly, is now the most common cause of death in the age group of 15-39 years, with three times as many men taking their own lives, compared to women. Causes include mental health issues, for which there is little help here, study pressures, economic pressures (particularly for poor farmers), and domestic violence (women).

So distressing. It’s yet another huge problem that India has to come to terms with, a large part of which involves reducing the stigma around mental health issues, and providing real support. Let alone changing the blatant sexism, sexual violence and coercive control that is routinely directed against women here.

My first view of the lake at Pushkar

I went for a stroll. I was starving. This veg laffa (Middle-Eastern bread wrap) ended up in my hand in no seconds flat. Steamed potatoes, salad and spices. With garlic sauce. Mind-bogglingly good.

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Go to Part 2