Udaipur and Updates!

I'm back! Udaipur was a fantastic weekend away. What a place- again highly recommended.........set on a huge lake with narrow (quite mediterranean) streets and palaces and temples all over town. After an all night bus ride from Jaipur, we slept for a few hours and then set of for the City Palace. The whole place was being decorated as it was going to be the wedding venue for the Maharaja (king/ruler) of Udaipur's daughter the next day. What can I say? If Carlsberg made wedding venues.... purple and red drapes over buildings, amazing gazebos, mirrored crystals hanging from the trees, an after party on an island on the lake, fairly lights over every tree. Unbelievable!! Scenes from "Wedding Crashers" came to mind...I should have done it! On the way back we took a sleeper train which was a great experience, everyone wanting to know where we were from and where we were going.

School this week has been brilliant. Yesterday was National Women's Day in India (The men were saying that National Men's day is the other 365 days of the year...haha) and a group of approximately 30 women from the local community arrived at the school to have a talk on women's rights and then to take part in various games. The talk was in Hindi but someone kindly provided me with a loose translation afterwards... Domestic violence (especially amongst poorer castes/classes) is a large problem in India. Often labourers, the men prefer to spend their wages on cheap alcohol and then come home and beat their wives. Also common is if the wife's family have not provided a sufficient dowry to the husbands family at the time of marriage. In this instance, it's often not just the husband who harrasses the wife, but his whole family will have a go too. So, the point of the talk was to inform the women how to go about filing a police complaint or how to contact local activists against violence and basically how to stand up for themselves. The men really do wear the trousers in India...

Girls grooming has also been a big hit. More and more girls are arriving each day. So much so that I think we'll have to curb the numbers. I bought a load of make up and they all went mad over it. It descended (again) into mayhem today, all of them giggling and fighting over mascara, babies crying and of course at the end I realised things were missing......what a surprise!

So many of you have posted such nice comments on this blog. I thought it would be good to answer some of your questions.

Fashion

I have written before about how incredible the women look here. I really don't think I could ever get tired of seeing a group of Indian women. So stunning. The men however don't fair so well! It's straight out of the 70's! Most of them wear these high waisted, bootcut/flare trousers. They are all so thin these trousers look comical. Also they love T-shirts with captions. A couple I have seen today; "Hell is full, so I'm back!" and "I am the bad thing that happens to good people"

Climate
It's getting really hot here now. It's not so bad at the house (we can go up to the roof and catch a few rays after school- as you can imagine, I'm really tanned...??) but at school it's getting pretty smelly and the flies are all over you.

Cricket
A national obsession, especially as the cricket world cup is going on here at the moment. You see mini cricket matches going on all over the place. Everyone is an amateur pundit.

Food
Mia the maid at our house (about 4ft 8” from Assam) does all the cooking and she does a great job. Meals always consist of two vegetable dishes; one curry/soup like dish and then cooked vegetables mixed with a spicy paste. It always tastes great but doesn't really fill you up, so inevitably you then eat copious amount of rice and roti/chapati bread or potatoes. Bloat city. Missing meat and especially fish a lot.

Company
So we are now two girls and two guy volunteers. Michaela (18) arrived on the weekend and we are now sharing a room. She looks like a younger (!) version of me. Very pale, brown hair and blue eyes. Everyone thinks we are sisters. Michael (23) from Ireland is still here and Simon (19) from Derby. As I said before, we are an eclectic mix, but this month would have been a very lonely experience without them. I think living in an Indian homestay in an area where there are no western people or tourists with no real opportunity to make friends could have been very isolating. Plus travelling in a group is more fun too.

Photo Album
My sister very kindly collated a fantastic photo album for my birthday so that I could bring it away with me. (Thanks to all those who contributed!) I took it to school today and the kids LOVED seeing it. They couldn’t get their heads round the pictures of snow at all, brilliant to see their reactions. It’s also a good way of teaching them English vocabulary…brother, sister, friend, boyfriend!

I am planning a solo voyage to Delhi, India's capital this weekend. Good one to se whilst I'm here. Coming home next week! I can't believe it, it's gone just as fast as everyone said it would.

Over and out until next time! xxxx