07/09/2010

India strikes again . . .

Woke up with a developed infected left eye. Maybe conjunctivitis ?

Hired bikes with Aggie and went to Orcha national park where all we saw was cows and monkeys, wasn't really expecting to see much other wildlife if I'm honest. We hung out by the river for a while in our bikini tops trying to get our white bods the same colour as our arms and faces. I had my boils soaking in the stream for a while, not too sure how cleansing this is for them! My bike was a mere though, the seat height couldn't be adjusted so it was too low, which made me look ridiculous and to draw attention to the fact, the bike pedals squeaked with every turn, so everyone could hear me. Every bump resulted in the seat falling back and pointing upwards, as you can imagine, pointing into delicate areas.

Shower, snooze as it was too hot and the power was off, a daily occurrence everywhere I've been, followed by glorious rain, so so refreshing. People couldn't understand me walking in it.

On the rickshaw to Jhansi to get the sleeper to Delhi at first 6 people crammed on, you know it was comfy, we ended up with 15people on the rickshaw, low and behold the only fat guy decides to sit on my bag, luckily nothing at all breakable in there or that woulda been the end of it for good!

Usual chill out in a couple posh hotel restaurants for a few hours reading my books drinking lots of tea and eating nice food, this really chills me out for the journey, my favourite part of the travellingness, my eyes were bad though, at Aggies place when I looked in the mirror I started to cry at the state of my eyes, also coz they hurt so bad, so I have natural tears which aren't helping in the slightest. If you look at my pics you can see how minging I look facially, plus add the boils on my legs and I really am a treat.

I sat with the locals for a while around a mini temple thing, every city or town has temple after temple randomly between shops, houses and alleys, where quite often they give free food a blessing from the gods. So I watched that, and as usual played along fake names, lifestyle, and where I'm off to on the train next to the locals, the big group of guys just standing staring, amazed I can talk, eat or drink as I obviously must do something odd.

Oh and I forgot to say. On the way to Aggies for a quick shower before I upped and left, as you turn off the main road there is a tiny opening with a tree next to the stairs you go up to hers. There was this huge group of men standing around, at first I thought some sort of Indian version of a christening as I could only see some turban important looking guy splashing water with a leaf, it wasn't 'til I noticed, that in actual fact a woman was being held still by about 5 blokes while the turban guy was whipping her in the face with this leaf repeatedly. The woman just stood and when he paused he shouted Hindi, she whined and cried out and then he continued whipping her, I witnessed about 10mins of this poor woman struggling being whipped with a wet leaf, I mean, what, I just don't understand. xx