Delhi 2.0 Day 3

Sunrise camel ride anyone?

I am so glad we did this and it was totally worth getting up early for. The camels were pretty hospitable and made the early morning start time as painless as possible, complete with curbside pick up just outside our hotel.

This is our driver Dinesh--we love him! He is so funny but also thoughtful and considerate.

Besides the plethora of smells that camels emit, it was a very pleasant experience. And really peaceful too. Jake’s camel was young and lazy and my camel was older and a little ornery, but I am counting myself lucky that he only reached his head up and lightly spit on me just a few times.

P.S. Camels are pretty freaking ugly. Im just saying.

My favorite part of the whole thing was towards the end. We were riding past a gypsy camp when this old guy walked over and started playing local music for us. It wasn’t long until the kids from the camp started wandering over and of course the littlest one stole my heart. He was adorable anyway, but when you took away his pants (I know that sounds creepy but hear me out), put a turban on his head and add his “dancing” (bouncing) around to the music----well lets just say my heart didn’t stand a chance.

We chilled back at the hotel some but then hit the road for Agra. On our way out the "guard"/greeter of the hotel was being so funny. He insisted that I take several pictures of him saluting us and sending us off.

It was quiet the drive but we made stops along the way so that helped to break it up some. After lunch at McDonalds in Jaipur (SCORE) we stopped to pick up some custom made clothing Jake had ordered the other day and hit the road again. We were one the road for a bit until we stopped at the labyrinth well/temple thing. They have done some restoration work on it since I was last here in July, so that was neat to see. The other neat thing to see was the colorful parrots that were chilling around the grounds today.

Yoga position carving from ancient times

Instead of going to the pottery man afterwords, we went to the local rug weavers shop. I loved this! Not only did I like this style of rug better then some of the other ones I have seen while in India, but the setting was so ideal it almost seemed fake. I didn’t end up buying anything because the weaver and myself could not agree on a reasonable price, but on the bright side I got him down from 55 USD to 25 USD. He was literally following me around the village bargaining with me. It was actually kind of comical. Once I got in the car he kept yelling $25 to me so as we drove away I rolled down my window and kept yelling $20 back. :)

I love this picture. It is so raw and Indian. Hooka anyone?

Driving as much as we did today gave us plenty of opportunity to just observe the daily events of life in India. Besides the regular insane traffic, we crossed some train tracks that had a train coming—just no signal. We were fine (obviously) but it was a little nerve-racking to look over and to see a train coming when you had no reason to even suspect to see one. Besides the normal cows we saw a lot of water buffalo, horses, camels, pigs and donkeys today as well. We passed a couple of temple parades, various God statues and two butt naked men walking along the side of the road. 

The naked men were Jains that were on pilgrimage for God, who naturally preferred them naked and without any worldly possessions---such as clothing. We talked a lot about the 3G rules of driving in India: Good horn, Good break and Good Luck, may or may not have had a burping contest (I promise it isn’t considered rude over here, people burp all the time and never say excuse me) and made lots of “This is India!” and “Happy India!” comments, as they are sometimes the easiest thing to say when trying to understand whatever you just witnessed. But most importantly, we were lucky enough to have Lord Krishna with us every kilometer of the way.