Strange weather in India..and a leaking roof

Yesterday the roof of my penthouse was almost gone. I saw school dresses blowing in the air over Barkat Nagar. Two marble plates lifted of my roof and fell on the floor. Seems a little storm raged over our neigboorhood. Good news is that everything in my room is still pretty much ok; the roof is still at its place, only the layer on top of my roof has now become a little bit fragile. I`ve got only one leak, and even that one is in a corner where nothing important is present. It only almost touches my eletricity plugs. Today the strange weather continued..hail came falling from the Jaipur-skies! Almost feels like I am in the Netherlands.

Ah..and next week I`ll be going to Shahbad to start take some interviews with the local population. In total I`ve got about 50 questions..so I can ask them questions till they drop death..or just fall asleep.

Last sight-seeing in Jaipur before exploring Rajasthan! (?)

YES!...

Yesterday I finished the last great landmarks of Jaipur so that I can now honistly say that this city has nothing really, really special anymore that I have not yet seen. Yesterday I went together with Mauro to the City Palace, the observatory, the tiger fort and the palace of the winds to go...sightseeing. The City Palace is the place were the current Raj of Jaipur is reciding. He is a kind of king of Rajasthan. His home is pretty impressive, and pretty big. Only part of it is however open to the public, and part of this part is open as a museum. So I have seen two gigantic silver mugs in which the king kept is water of the Ganges for when I went to ENgland. I have also seen the royal clothes, polo shirts, guns, paintings, carpets, books, elephant-carrages and a small miniature train of "the royal coach" (sorry dad, tried to take it but too many guards around me). It was pretty impressive, although I liked the palace of the winds more. Situated in the middle of the Pink City, this old but beautiful building once served the purpose as window for the Kings 300 wives. SInce they were not allowed to go outside the palace complex, but still wanted to see something of city life, the king built a house with a lot of windows. These look down on the busy streets of Jaipur..a pretty nice sight.

We also went to an observatory (where Mauro had to pay a 50 rupee fine because he was making pictures without a ticket that allowed him to take those pictures. All astronomical machines where pretty weird, and all of them served the purpose to determine the position of the stars and the heavenly bodies..and sometimes the time.

Finally we went up to the tiger fort to enjoy the sun set..and to get away from the hustle and noise of the pink city. It was a nice temperature, the sun went down slowly, and it was a great sight to see.

Ow yea, along the way I was almost but on the horns of a cow (I think it accidently moved its head like that to scare some flies), and Mauro got attacked by another (pregnant) cow. Seems the warm weather also makes these creatures a bit cranky some times.

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...