To family in MN - Merry Christmas! LOL (Lots of Love:)
Here's how I spent my Christmas - make the most of yours!
I stayed up until the first minutes of Christmas Day. I was up reading Sophie’s World, fueled on a sugar high from the treasures we purchased on our 11:00pm binge run. After a more than filling dinner I was telling Greg how I've been coping with homesickness by eating. Then he mentioned his craving for a fruit and nut chocolate bar... we went out to the clock tower - sure enough there were a few people gathered around the omelet stand and a general store.
Greg asked me how many bars I wanted, "one" I said without thinking much of it. Then he kind of gave me look encouraging me to indulge... "Ok two". I got some pops and we went over to the omelet stand, yes an omelet stand at 11pm - and tried some of the hard boiled eggs. They were spiced to perfection. Then we went back to the room and continued our binge. I ate my bars as quick as I could without throwing up my last meal and a half. Merry Christmas indeed.
I slept like a baby, but woke up dry as a desert – then I remembered I’m in a desert. We had breakfast before 11am consisting of more sugar with some fruit - banana chocolate pancake and muesli (similar to granola), yogurt & fruit. Before, leaving for Jaswant Thada, we stopped for some hard boiled eggs at the omelet stand :)
A highlight from the day is certainly the boys and girls greeting us - "ha-low" and "your name?". What fun to watch them enjoy their day off from school, playing cricket in the streets. We saw a good deal of these children as we meandered to Jaswant Thada, the tomb where the royalty are memorialized. We did not really know exactly how to get there, but the locals kind of pointed us in the right direction. We took a different route back and walked through even smaller alleyways and paths. What a great way to see the city.
Then, it was back to the Shivam Paying Guest House for a little siesta before we go to the palace and get dinner. Somehow, Greg and I started singing “Can you paint with all the colors of the rainbow” while resting for the afternoon.
Dinner was great! We had lamb – one dish could almost burn your tongue off, the other was milder with a wonderful flavor, can’t go wrong with cashews in the curry!
A few memories from the beginning of my tour – in New Delhi.
We got an auto rickshaw to M. Gandhi's memorial/museum. He was 90 years old, wow. There was not much about Gandhi himself; there was more on the Mutiny/National War of Independence/Uprising. It was the "nationalistic history" which leaves out some key points that make Indians or look bad. My favorite part was taking off my sandals and walking into the little temple where Gandhi prayed.
I remember the first learning about Gandhi and non-violence while in Mr Ruhland's religious education class at Holy Angels. With subject matter such as Gandhi's non-violence, how can you go wrong?
In/around Bikaner, our next stop, I had the opportunity to take my sandals off at the Hindu temple devoted to rats. Yeah, I did not misspeak, it is a temple which houses thousands of rats so people can come and worship/pay homage to them. That was a certainly a first.