India

This was a parade for a boy's first hair-cut! 

I've been in India a bit over 3 weeks now, and I can confirm that when people say it's full on, they aren't kidding.  I was in a car yesterday trying to find my guesthouse, and we were trying to navigate through the impossibly narrow streets of the old town. The driver didn't know where to go, it had just rained and there was water pouring down the street with rubbish and pigs and cows everywhere, and we had caused a little traffic jam so all these bikes were honking at us. Then this guy leaned right in through my window as we were trying to get directions and asked over and over again, "Madam photo? Photo madam? MADAM PLEEEASE PHOTO?!!", and I felt like turning to him and screaming in his face "$#%^ YOU AND YOUR WHOLE #$%^ COUNTRY WHERE IS THE NEAREST INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TAKE ME THERE RIGHT NOW!!" But, I didn't.

I can really see why travelers have meltdowns here. It's like the whole country is trying to game you, thinks it's hilarious, and you're always about 3 steps behind whatever game is going on. Sometimes it's to get money, but I'm starting to think they just all love screwing each other.

Laxmi the elephan was also trying to play me, I just don't know how. 

At the same time, I've met some lovely, interesting people, and life is certainly not dull. So, I will hang in here for as long as my stomach will allow.  (I've already spent three nights awake with nausea and am on antibiotics...so I don't know how long that will be).

I moved to a new town a few days ago, and yesterday came across a store selling trumpets. I just stopped to ask for directions to the doctor (who just laughed at me (of course!) when I told him I accidentally drank some tap water). Anyway, the music store guys started talking to me...which ended up with me treating the main street to a rendition of "Danny Boy". 

So, I think India is the place where you THINK you are going to the doctors, but are actually heading off to serenade 5 guys and a squashed rat on the pavement with an Irish ballad.

I stayed in Udaipur for 3 weeks, which is a gorgeous small city on man-made lakes with a palace in the middle and a castle overlooking it all. It was really stunning, as you can see...

My guesthouse was just next to the lake, so I had some nice morning walks. I didn't do much tourist stuff (being the word's worst tourist), but I had a quick trip out to a rural village to capture a monitor lizard in someone's loungeroom (they had to beat the lizard senseless with a hockey stick before it weakened its grip on the couch long enough to be stuffed into a bag). 

I spent a fair bit of time just helping people with marketing - the guesthouse I stayed at was new, so we put them on trip advisor and some other sites. And, another guy I met wanted some help doing a facebook page and a few other things for his tailoring business. 

Naresh the tailor, with some cushions I got made up. I went to the temple with him and his family so I gave them to him. 

Naresh's wife and gorgeous little daugher

One guy I met, Ansh, who does traditional massage and has best mustache in Rajasthan, was asking about how to get his business to stay high in Google + rankings. I was explaning that google is nice to you if you pay it attention to it and give it lots of photos, reviews etc, and he said, "Ohhh...so google is like my girlfriend, if I pay her lots of attention and give her flowers she'll love me, but if i don't, I'll get nothing?"  He was a very funny guy. 

I was talking to one of Ansh's friends one day in his store and he was saying he was getting married in a few months. I asked about his fiancee and he didn't have many details! He said his parents had chosen her for him and he could date her if he wanted to, but he didn't want to. "We can talk after the wedding," he said, "why would we want to talk now?"

So, arranged marriages are alive and well (-ish) in India. Even love matches seem fairly fraught. I'm staying at a guesthouse in a town called Bundi at the moment. The owners are away on a 5-day negotiation session with the parents of the girl their son wants to marry. It's a love match, but neither set of parents is particuarly happy with it, so they are on their second round of negotiations around the whole thing. She is a modern girl (an architect, doesn't wear a sari), and he's from a very old, established family in a small town. So, the guy's parents want her to give up her work and move to the country town (and wear a sari, I assume).

The owners left their pot-smoking youngest son behind to (mis)manage the guesthouse while they're away. On the first morning I was here I walked through a cloud of smoke to ask him a question and he told me, "Actually, I'm high. But don't tell my grandmother." I thought that unless his grandmothers olfactory senses had completely died she probably knew, since she was sitting about 5 metres away.