Hey!

so the pictures, it seems, are regretably limited to elephants. although camels or monkeys would be much more appropriate to our current location in the province of Rajastan.

basically a lot has happened since the last time i was abble to write a post... so ill try to fill you all in on some of the awesome things that have been happening:

about a week and a half ago i left the sadhana forest, where i had been volunteering for 5 weeks in south india, working on water conservation and reforestation projects. i had made some fantastic friends while there, and it was more than sad to leave. probably the only thing that i dont like about traveling is having to leave really awesome people (and places). anyways, it was an amazing 5 weeks, im so glad i did it (if you want to know more about it or plan to volunteer in india...) and i hope ill cross pathes with them traveling in the future. woot!

from the south, i hoped on a plane north to delhi to meet my dad who is visiting me for 2 weeks! it was super exciting getting off the plane and seeing him. although very crazy to be back to the world of showers (?!?!) ha ha. and rain; the entire time in the south was full sun, and seightseeing around delhi in thunderstorms and cold was a bit different. so nice to see him though! and travel for 2 weeks with good ol daddy!

after a few days in delhi, which is a very VERY crowded and crazy city (though i liked it alot for it), we hopped on our first train in in india, which was a 19 hour sleeper to jaisalmer. it was a little crazy, although for some reason i was able to sleep almost the entire time despte the people and noise and lights.

jaisalmer is in the province of rajastan (where were spending the most of our 2 weeks) which is in the north west, right near the border of pakistan in the thar desert. needless to say that of all the places i have been in the world so far, this one felt the most different and exotic. the city is basically an enormous and imposing fort that is one of the (or only?) forts (at least in the area) that people still live in. so instead of being a museum or something, its a city. it was fantastic. everything is made out of stone, but looks like lace (how they managed to do this i have no idea, it was amazing). and withing the fort were temples and palaces and markets.

probably one of the craziest things was bumping into emma and adri walking around the town. (they had left the volunteer place 3 weeks before and neither of us had any idea where the other one would be traveling). in a country of over 1 billion people, it was more than awesome. ha ha.

we were extreemily lucky, and withought prior knowledge had made it to this city during the desert festival which happens during the full moon every year. basically that meant heading out to the nearby sand dunes (thar desert) for the closing night where there were hundreds of camels and many more hundreds of people scattered around the dunes and camel races and planes and music with the backdrop being the rising full moon that was both enormous and red. it was really cool because there were only a handful of tourists, and if you looked out over camels, it was a both timeless and extreemily exotic scene. there are pictures up, but obviously they do little to capture it all. it was definately one of the coolest and magical things ive seen traveling. to top it off, at one point the skies opened up and, wait for it... it RAINED! apparently there are periods in history where it doesnt rain there for 7 years... and its the dry season. it was great!

after jaisalmer, we took another night train (though shorter this time) to the town of jodhpur, getting in before sunrise. jodhpur is another city dominated by an imposing and impressive stone fortress. it is also distiguished by its blue buildings (most of the skyline looking out over the fort walls is blue). apparently this is to keep it cool and less buggy. we saw the fort and wandered through all of the little streets and markets. its so cool because most all of the hotels and restaurants in the areas weve been in are rooftops, and so it is so beautiful! and obviously indian food is amazing, gah!

from there we got a car to another city called udaipur. we were going to drive ourselves just for the chaos of it, but considering most all of the rode signs are in hindi, i dont know where we would have ended up, so its probably good that someone else was driving. also driving in general here is crazy, to say the least. we saw some fantasic temples though, all stone carved and magnificent. and some beautiful countryside.

udaipur is kind of the venice of india it seems, a city distiguished by its 5 lakes, with building and steps built right to the edge, with bridges and island palaces and temples that look to be floating on the water. once again, everything was rooftops, and were begining to be spoiled with all the good views! ha ha walked around a lot, shopped, took a boatride, ate a lot of good food... the usual. a cool thing is that the city is know for its miniature art (the detail is crazy!), and i took like 4 hours of lessons one morning and it was loads of fun.( i painted an elephant: luck (symbol of jaipur (were going there tomorrow) and a horse (symbol of udaipur: stregth)) i also bumped into more people i knew from volunteering which was a little crazy ha ha.

next on to where we are now in pushkar. took the train again, no sleeper though, so lots of looking out the window. it was great. we see more of the town tomorrow, basically its a holy place full of temples and pilgrims and bathing ghats and innondated.. i mean REALLY... with monkeys. like everywhere. you can basically stand at any point and if you look carefully, monkeys begin to materialize and there are like 20 in your view. and some of them are freakin huge! ha ha.we read in the paper yesterday though that in jaipur (where were going tomorrow) monkeys attacked an indian man on his roof, and pushed him off and he died... so yeah. but the baby ones are so cute!

we head to jaipur tomorrow, then agra (taj mahal), delhi, then paris for me, home for dad.

love and miss you all!

xo

S