Rajesthani Holiday!

 NAMASTE!

So I've been back at school a week now since my January holiday. Seeing as we traveled so far South last time we decided to take the opposite route this time and head up North. Plus this meant I could meet up with some of the other Project Trust volunteers who have been working in a school in Gujarat. Me and Emily were on the same selection course back in October 2012.

And we've remained fairly close...

 

Okay very close

 So I was very, very excited to get up to Rajesthan and see Emily as well as her Project partner Kat whose also lovely. But first I had to get there! India is a huge country, 20 times bigger than the UK so it took me 36 hours to travel from Hyderabad. Because I'm a poor student we traveled sleeper class which is pretty basic but I had a really nice time! The minute we sat down we were introduced to a woman who was also travelling to Ajmer (our first stop) and who looked after us- she insisted on giving us food until I physically had to push it away. Telling an Indian you don't want to eat has the same reaction to telling them you live on the moon. So we were well looked after, I know some people worry about me traveling around the country with just my partner but on the trains I've never felt threatened and people are genuinely friendly and kind, I always have someone to talk to.

 
We reached Ajmer at 3am but our lovely traveling companions were good enough to come and grab us from the mob of auto drivers asking to take us to Pushkar. We just collapsed at the hotel and the next day decided to visit a local temple.

 

TEMPLE

The temple was great, nice and quiet and completely beautiful. After a lovely couple of hours there we grabbed an auto and headed over to a Jain temple. There was a big barrier into the main area but as soon as the guard saw us he pulled is through to see everything- yey white people privileges.

Auto!

One of the main principles of Jainism is that they have thrown off the luxury's in life and that includes clothes. You can tell Jain people in India because they aren't in the traditional saris etc but just dress in white cloth but in the temples there tends to be quite a lot of this kind of image on the walls! It seems so bizarre in such a conservative country but India's nothing if not a country of contrast.

 

 I think we all needed just to chill out for a while so we headed to the local park. This was less relaxing because while the locals are fine to just sit down on the grass and talk when we try we constantly get asked for photos or to pose with someones child. So instead we took a pedalo out on the lake for an hour which was really good fun! 

On day two we took the advice of our lovely hotel host and took a local bus up to the 'city on a hill'. The bus journey was awful, up these tiny windy roads and the driver seemed oblivious to the growing drop just a few feet away from his speeding tires. I felt so sick and was genuinely praying that we wouldn't go over the edge. When we got to the top it was very difficult- there were beggars everywhere, I've never seen so many in one place and we all felt very claustrophobic. We could see what looked like the old city wall so we decided to go over and have a walk which was much better! No crowds and the view from the top was almost worth all the trouble it took to get there...

From the top we could see the whole of Ajmer!

Next we visited a mosque in the old part of Ajmer and got some serious shopping in at the local bazaar! Always my favorite part of the holidays! Then we had to get a bus out of Ajmer and on to Barefoot College in Tilonia. We went to Barefoot because my partner Fidra is very interested in Sustainable Development and is going to study it at university when we get back to the UK. She'd seen a video about the work the college do and begged us to go and visit, we agreed obviously and we had such a good time! If want to learn more about the amazing work done at Barefoot college you can read everything here: http://www.barefootcollege.org/

When we arrived we were shown our rooms for the night and then went for food in the community kitchen

The solar workshop.

and then went for a tour of the old campus. We went to see where the women work and learn to make solar panels and study as electrical engineers but when we arrived they were learning to sing 'Imagine' for an important festival day coming up. As Britians it was decided we would know the song better (in fairness we probably should...) and we got to have a go at teaching. It was such a different experience from my teaching at Devnar, for a start the women actually wanted to learn and payed attention to what we were saying! Secondly it was sucha help being able to have the class read along from the whiteboard, even if they didn't always know what they were reading. It made me realise how difficult a job I have with the little children I teach here at school- but I wouldn't swap them for the world, they make my job the single hardest thing I've ever done but also by far the most rewarding.

In the evening there was a big traditional Rajesthani music show in the main courtyard and I had such a good time! There were a lot of fellow teachers there from a group called 'Teach for India' who got us up and taught us some Bollywood dance moves! It was the best atmosphere!

Fidra and Kat learning how to play some of the instruments

We all went to bed very tired but happy. The next day we looked around the new campus and then had some free time. We went to see the puppet studio- otherwise known as the communications room. All the puppets are made on site by local people and are used to communicate to the nearby rural villages about important issues such as water use.

My favorite creepy puppet

My attempt at making a puppet head!

I managed to make friends with two little girls within about half an hour (its seriously going to be a problem when I get back to the UK and dont have lots of small children to play with me anymore) and spent one my happiest bits of the holiday just playing on a tire swing for a few hours.

I don't speak Hindi so I never found out her name I just called her Monkey. She seemed to like it.

 AND THEN! As if my day couldn't get any better we found the plane!

I had such a good time at Barefoot and learnt such a lot- I was really gutted we only had one night there but we had to say goodbye to everyone (including my new best friend Monkey) and grab a local bus to Pushkar. I think we all loved Pushkar, it was a strange mix of incredibly holy ghats and Hindus and tourists from all nations and the shops designed to cater to them. Which for us meant funny day trips, meeting some fabulously cool people, trying every restaurant with wifi in town and shopping!

India really does have some of the best food in the world

Our favorite little rooftop cafe!

So Fidra went of to the famous Pushkar ghat. A man in religious Hindu dress immediately spotted her and filled her hands with flowers urging her to throw them in the lake. She agreed but kept telling him, 'I'm not going to pay you for this you know.' He started blessing her with smoke chanting, 'umm Krishna, Ghandi donation umm India eh Ganesh umm donation eh rupee um Hindu' and then proceeded to throw a coconut at a tourist who'd not followed the signs and was wearing shoes. She ran back up to us looking traumatized by her genuine religious experience and being the good friends we are I killed myself laughing.

We decided to try a Bollywood dance class. Sadly Kat felt unwell and didn't want to join in but me, Fidra and Emily had a great time! Our teacher was brilliant and probably the campest man I have ever met but he taught us the moves to some of our favorite Bollywood films. Including this one below!

While in Pushkar we spent far too much money and had a great time just hanging out. It's quite nice to be in a tourist town sometimes, it gives a relieve from the hassle of being a white person living in India!

Next stop was Bikaner! We'd been reading in the guidebook that it was a great little town for camel safaris and was a lot less hassley than some of the other places but it did mean a five hour bus ride to get there! Indian buses are an experience once and a pain the rest of the time- a space that's meant for thirty people can always fit seventy and if it can't you're clearly not trying hard enough! So I spent most of the trip wedged between my huge backpack and a child with a goat tucked into his lap. In Bikaner we settled into the guest house for a day and the next day we set off at 10am for our two day camel trek in the desert!

My camel!

I had by far the cutest camel!

I'm such a desert baby!

The desert trek was great but it was freezing and a camel is not the comfiest thing to ride for two days! Still that's another thing off my India experiences list! We did have a lot of laughs along the way. Back at the hotel it turned out that the Bikaner Camel festival started the next day and we should be up nice and early in the morning to get ready! Ready for what...?

It turned out that the owner of our guest house was high up on the Rajesthani tourism board so as his guests we were all taken to the headquarters and dressed up in tradition Rajesthani dress before being put on the back of horse drawn carts as part of the parade!

I have such a beautiful friend

We even had a police escort! 

 

 

At the parade we had traditional dancers

Other funny foreign tourists in traditional dress

Some friendly camel people

Majorly unnecessary signs

And the most blinged out camels ever! This one was complete with a clock and boombox!!!  

 

 

 

I sadly had to go back to the hotel early with high blood sugars but the other girls tell me that the show went on way into the evening and included a woman dancing with 12 pots on her head, fire eaters and the Mr. Moustache competition!They were even good enough to take some photos for me.

We grabbed an overnight train from Bikaner to Jodphur that night which was freezing! The worst cold I have ever experianced even in the UK and we had to wake a family up to get them out of our beds! You could just see them thinking 'inconsiderate white girl' but at 3am all I was thinking was MY BED. MOVE. NOW!!!

In Jodphur we saw a palace and saw some pretty parks.

But we needed to do something a bit more exciting so next day we booked to do six zipwires off Jodphur fort! It was so so so much fun and the views were incredible!

Kat getting all intrepid

PROJECT TRUST!

Our new friend from Brighton!

Last day with my girls!

We spent the rest of the day looking round the fort and learnt such a lot- it was great, really well done.

Fidra being a total tourist!

In the evning we went out to celebrate our last night as a foursome :( but I found beer!!!

I had such a fabulous time with some really good friends in Rajesthan. I have my next holiday from the middle of April until the middle of June and am planning to do just about everything. For now it's back to teaching. I've been back a week now and I'd forgotten how utterly frustrating and brilliant it is. My first class jumping from the desks and screaming 'ANNA MADAM!' at the tops of their lungs when I walked back in to our room on that Monday was amazing. There's no feeling like it. Currently we're studying our English animals with some very kind help from Ogla Madam. LKG are little rioters as always but remain as cute as ever and I've set up a play session for them on a Thursday afternoon. 4th class are looking at 'Our Holidays' and are working hard (well some of them) and sadly I no longer teach 5th class because my timetables changed. I took a cover lesson with them today and it was so good to be working with them again. I'm making progress with learning the local language and me and my partner are hoping to teach English to some of the working staff in the evenings and are looking into a secondary project at a local school for children with severe learning difficulties.