Confessions

I'm tired. I think Laura is too. Traveling is stressful and I'm working extra hard to de-stress both of us. It's 10:00 PM and we're catching a 7-hr train at 6:00 AM tomorrow, after which we'll be in a new city where we don't know anybody and we'll have to haggle (again) for a room that we'll stay in for a few nights at the most. Then repeat.

I'm missing the steadiness of Udaipur already, even if it was a fairy-tale city.

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Internet has been unreliable: servers have gone down (for an entire city), power has gone out. Hard to maintain a steady blog. I keep an active journal that includes email addresses of people we meet, activities done, assorted daydreams, words and phrases in Hindi and local dialects ("wasp," "buffalo," "child," "how do you say ...?").

I have found 3 incredibly useful phrases:

"Namaste" = hello & goodbye. A general greeting, it's good for putting people at ease.

"Pacha" = child. Namaste pacha is an entire conversation and is often all you ever need to say to get kids on your side or assure their parents that you are a good, trustworthy person.

"Kya keheteh ho" (phonetic spelling) = "how do you say ...?" I learned that on the bus last night from a very talkative calligraphy teacher in Jodhpur.

For the rest pointing, practice and patience are all that are required. A good sense of humor. At times you are a walking comedy troupe. It took me ten minutes to ask for chai the other day from a street vendor. It was worth the effort though.

Smiling goes a long way. So does walking away (see earlier post about haggling).

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It is high wedding season in Rajasthan. Everybody and their cousin's next-door brother (and sister) are getting married and everyone else is invited, including interesting foreigners. Fireworks erupt across the city every 5 or 10 minutes. After Mumbai we think of other things, and are relieved when constellations of red or gold blossom and fade into the night sky.

You get used to it, truthfully. The cows, the trash, the beggars, the impossibly thick air, the narrow streets wide enough for only one person that somehow also fit open drains, street vendors, cow dung and speeding rickshaws.

The noise. The competition for sonic space. The loudspeakers from the mosque compete (intentionally) with the (intentional) clanging of the Hindu temple bells and the (overbearing) shouts from the markets.

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I am tired, and want to rest. We have promised ourselves solace in Darjeeling. But that is still several weeks away. First we have camel rides in the desert, the Taj Mahal (not the one in the news recently), Bodghaya (epicenter of Buddhism past and present). Keeping an ear to the ground and laying low for a bit. Many things to see and do, people to meet. A parting of the ways between us and our Spanish friends at some point.

Traveling companions help relieve much stress.

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Laura and I were walking through the chocking exhaust of an Udaipur side street the other day.

"Do you know something I love about India?" I asked.

"What's that?"

"You can fart on the street and no one's going to know the difference."

She burst out laughing.

"I was just thinking the same thing," she said.