Many more pic's at Flickr... (click on the link in the left column)

Day 8: July 22, 2007.

We are staying in very cool guest house in Jodhpur (central Rajastan), called Durag Niwas. It's a family run business, and the owner is a fabulous, flamboyantly theatrical 24 year old named Govind. Such a character! And his family are sweet, gentle, efficient and most welcoming. So far the best place we've stayed by a long way.

When we arrived, he sat us down and gave us a complete run down of the city, with insider tips and maps and recommended walking routes and places to avoid.... I wish every guest house would do this, it was incredibly helpful and saved us so much time! He runs an N.P.O. to empower untouchable women and children here, and there's a young German women who's been living here for almost 3 months, volunteering as an English teacher for the project. Interesting.

The guest house itself is a beautiful oasis of billowing sari's and trinkets hanging from ceilings, doorways and window rails everywhere, hand-painted walls with inlaid mirrors and classic old Indian photo's and paintings all over. Two overweight, affectionate dogs - a little sausage dog called Tipsy and a sweet long haired white dog called Whisky (apparently granny named them, and she likes a tipple) - stroll around and curl up under your feet as you eat, and Govind and Mukta's little boy runs riot around the place. Oh, and there's a big cage of birds that gave me the nicest wake-up call so far in India. This place is full of character and I would love to stay longer. But alas.... we have a schedule to stick to and tonight we're taking the overnight train to Jaisalmer.

I had hoped to write every day but you know, at the end of each day we are just completely exhausted and have to collapse into bed and then be ready to leap out of bed for early trains-buses-photo op's the next morning. Today is a rare day: we decided not to leave the guest house till around 2, and just sleep in and catch up on washing, postcards, photo editing and blogging. This afternoon we're off to Meherangh, a magnificent fort-palace, built in the 14th century and still maintained by the Maharaja of Jodhpur and his trust committee.

I believe it's the place where Liz Hurley recently had her glitzy hoopla marriage and the town is still angry about the lack of respect shown to the Indian family and traditions during the dual ceremony gala. Apparently the 20 000-pound wedding photo spread in Hello! Magazine features - somewhat unsurprisingly - simply the beautiful people whilst the much-respected Indian family elders (presumably considered too unattractive and unimportant by the photographers) are conspicuously absent. The grooms father, a very wealthy local businessman, tried to enter one of the parties and the private security stopped him at the gate and wouldn't let him any further until finally a (British) member of the family came to sort things out. Kinda unforgivable, really. Anyways...

So. India. Such an incredible country. Extremes of wealth and poverty, riotous colour and noise... I'm sure you've all read verbose commentaries from people with greater descriptive skill than I so I shan't bore you here with all that. You know it's a crazy place: indisputable fact. We've had a great time so far (I had some mild tummy problems in Jaipur, but that's gone now) and it's been much easier that I was expecting. The Indians (apart from the touts and hasslers) are just so friendly and relaxed - with a great sense of humour, and will go out of their way to help foreigners out. And, yes, it is a photographers dream. Photo op's everywhere we look! People actually ask us to take their photo! "One photo, please madam!" After photographing 2 lovely giggling ladies in Jaipur Palace, they murmured softly (in Hindi - our guide translated for us) that they hoped I would show their photos in my home country.

Ryosuke has become a different person here. He told me that in Tokyo, every morning, he feels like throwing up. He never actually does - it's just a symptom of serious stress. Here he is cured: he's relaxed and becoming more confident every day. After about 5 days, he told me I had to let him do more of the communicating at hotels and restaurants to practice his English. He's been seriously frustrated with his English skills. Speaking with Indians is challenging because they have such an interesting way of using English, and of course the accent is tricky to catch sometimes, but they are far more patient and interested in communicating with people who don't have a lot of English than the average westerner. He's been experiencing an astonishing lack of interest/respect from Europeans who show little or no interest in speaking with him once they have a few difficulties. Last night we drank beer with a Dutch couple and a German woman - nice people, but they barely looked at him, let alone spoke with him. Afterwards he told me that he was beginning to hate English and people who expect that everyone should be able to speak English.

Anyway, despite the language difficulties, he is very relaxed and yesterday at a street party of sorts, he entertained the entire street by dancing like a maniac to/with the brass band - no inhibitions whatsoever, and he had a great time. An old woman came up to him and stuffed 20 rupee's into his mouth with a big smile as she paid the musicians! Ha ha. Disbelievers (I know who you are H & S), I have the photo's to prove it!

I plan to make a blog post for each place we stay in, with a few pic's, and hopefully upload most of the pic's to date to Flickr wherever I can connect the mac to the guest house connection (something which has proved unattainable so far...). Not sure when I'll actually be able to do any of that. But at least it's a plan....

Funny, one of the staff here, a tall lanky, very black fella with effeminate ways, just came and stood behind me and watched me write for a full 2 or 3 minutes.... Some Indians have no sense of privacy and personal space at all. It's one thing that really takes getting used to. Complete strangers coming up and standing with you as you stand somewhere to discuss maps or plans or whatever.... they just stand and stare. No point getting angry, they have no idea it's rude to us. Another funny thing is the way villagers will just rabbit on excitedly in Hindi and gesture here and there as if we understand every word, when we clearly do not. It's sweet and touching how welcoming they can be (most of the time). They may be looking sour but I find that if I offer a namaste greeting, with prayer-hands, they flash a big friendly smile and respond accordingly. I tell ya, a smile and a few key words in the local language go a long way when you have no common language.