An Indian wedding

On Tuesday and Wednesday we went to a wedding, and not just any wedding, but a Rajasthani Wedding. I have been told that people all over India come to Rajasthan to see these weddings, and to enjoy them. I was thus very happy to be invited to one by Sunny, an aiesec trainee from India. Besides me, many other people from my house were invited, so I was luckily not the only foreigner at the party.

The first day was especially a womens day, where different women from the family showed their dancing skills on the center stage. Some of them were actually pretty good dancers, and so it was fun to watch. A bit later in the show however we, the foreigners, were invited to the stage. And so we went up on the stage, and started dancing on one strange Hindi song..and Shakira. Luckily I stood a bit at the back, so that I wasn`t to prominent on all the camera's that were pointed at us. Afterwards we had some great food, what it was exactly I don`t know, but it was a great variation of tastes. You had everything on your plate: something sweet, salty, sour, bitter, gentle, soft, hard, spicy, fresh, strong..and on and on. It was thus a great time for the thong to taste all those different flavours!

Around 22:00-22:30 the party of day one was over, and we went back home.

On the second day the big party started around 20:00, and we arrived a bit late at 21:00 (something that was almost impossible to avoid, since I went with 4 ladies). We already missed a bit of the ceremony, but we were on time to see the bride and the groom sitting ready for a sh*tload of wedding pictures. They were both beautifully dressed in traditional Rajasthani dresses, decorated with everything that shines and looks expensive. Pretty soon we could again start eating our dinner their, and this time it was even more expansive. About 30 to 40 different dishes were waiting for us to taste. Too much to taste them all thus. The indian hostes after that again forced us to dance, especially Eveline who the night before amazed the crowd by dancing the Indian way on the centre stage, without any serious practice. The day after she already had some young (and very old) fans, and soon she was again "forced" to dance (not really forced, cause she loves to do it). The rest of us soon had to join in on the small disco-floor...and again Shakira was played.

After all this dancing it was already getting a bit late (22:30), and the place was slowly streaming empty. We thus also went, but not before we had to search about 1 hour to find transportation home. Life in India takes place between different times than in the Netherlands...