Dispatches from Jaipur, India
Arrived by Plane on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 12:15pm local time
Friday, March 13th, 2009
Jaipur; Return to Jhotwara; In which I discover that being an uncle is exhausting work
We were supposed to be visiting Kuldeep and his family in Jhotwara, a suburb of Jaipur, today. We couldn't get there as early in the morning as Kuldeep wanted, though. We needed to eat, of course, and then we needed to spend some time with Arvind, our host. We'd hardly…
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Jaipur; Holi discomfort, Batman!
Holi really takes it out of you. I don't know if it was the fine powdered colour or what, but we're both destroyed today. Arvind claims that the colour is toxic, and I believe it. We're both incredibly dehydrated, and my hands, lips and eyelids are all cracked and crusty.…
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
Jaipur; Happy Holi!
Today was the festival of Holi - the day Sheryl has been looking forward to for months. Holi is a celebration of spring, and it's marked by an explosion of colour, especially here in Rajasthan. We don't have an analogue of Holi at home in Canada, but we should. Our…
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
Jaipur; In which we are unwelcome in the Old City; Kuldeep, Pinky, Gunu and Yannick; Sheryl gets her painted elephants at last; Causing an un-Holi ruckus at the Elephant Festival
I've picked up some kind of skin condition while we were in the South. I don't know what it is or how I got it. It's an incredibly itchy rash that seems to be spreading to cover my entire body. Little liquid-filled blisters have erupted periodically, but only quite a…
Monday, March 9th, 2009
Jaipur; In the north at last; Camels again; Jaipur is the India I was afraid of
Suffering the effects of sleep deprivation, we washed up in Jaipur airport around noon, having spent nearly twenty-four straight hours travelling. At least we didn't smell too bad, since we'd been able to wash in the deserted toilet stalls of the closed Trivandrum terminal. We knew we had a place…
Kochi to Trivandrum to Trichy to Chennai; So much for not back-tracking; Chennai to Hyderabad to Jaipur
So here we are in the south of India - nearly as far south as it's possible to be, in fact - and we need to get up to the north. So it was a taxi to the train station in Ernakulam, and then a train to Trivandrum, and then…
