The end of the trip

The last days of my trip I spent with sightseeing, shopping and doing nothing.

Before Nitesh had to leave, we went together to Nahargarh Fort from where you have a spectacular view on Jaipur.



The same evening, Chhavi invited all for a delicious pasta night - so here the gang is sitting hungry and thirsty - Sankalp brought the Italian Grappa I gave him.



Somebody brought also a selfmade chocolate cake which was very good as well.



Another evening we spent at Ansh's first birthday party - with little table firework and funny hats.



Finally, Nidhi and me went shopping and she explained me some insights to Indian fashion. I left the shop with lovely kurtas and a long skirt and my credit card was feeling really hot.

As Nidhi is a fashion designer, I was happy to try on some of her designs.

The last day, Sankalp's dad took over the job as my personal shopper and we started our hunt for curtains for my room. After several shops, tens of curtains and hundreds of saris we still had not found the right thing. So he brought me to a sari shop and there we cut a deal that they will produce the curtains according to my wishes. The result will be shown later.

In the late evening, I said goodbye to everybody and Sankalp brought me to the bus stop from where I took a Volvo luxury coach:-) to Delhi and then an autorickshaw to the airport and then the plane home.

Bollywood, Shaadi & Fere

Today, I took a little break from the wedding ceremonies and I tried my luck with Bollywood. They were shooting the movie VEER in and around Jaipur and a friend of a friend casted foreigners for it.


So I was up before six and went to the crew hotel from where we left in a bus to a lake outside Jaipur. There, they had already built up Indian & Britisch tents and we got some breakfast. Then the girls had to dress in Empire robes and got our hair and makeup done. They chose four us and the rest and me could rest in a tent and that's mainly what we did all day. Except for lunch break when we got out and found thousands of spectators on the hills around the location. I´m not used to I only wished to get back to Jaipur and somehow got it organised.

Back at Sankalp's house, I had to re-dress fast as everybody else also Nitesh were already dressed for the Shaadi. Sankalp wore a Sherwani outfit in light and red colors and a turban on his head.


His next task was to mount a lovely decorated horse together with Ansh - his little grand-cousin - and he rode, we walked to Pashupati Nath temple of Lord Shiva. Sankalp and his parents did a puja before we returned to the house.

We left in cars to Ambedkar Circle and all the groom's family and friends gathered there. From there we danced and walked our way to Panigrah - the place of the wedding. We were supported by the Jea Band and some guys with electrical crystal chandeliers.

On the stage in Panigrah, Sankalp awaited his bride Nidhi who was carried in in a palaquin.

Together they stayed on stage for hours to greet the guests, accept gifts and take pictures with all and everybody.

The GUPTA family

friends

While Nidhi and Sankalp were busy, we others walked the location, chatted and ate the food which was served at different stalls as the evening before. Around midnight most of the guests left and the closest friends and the couple sat down on beds with little tables on them in a special room (it reminded me a bit of "Sol y Mar" in Leipzig) and the bride's family took care of us and fed us with all the delicious things.

We went home without the couple and changed into comfortable and warm clothes before we returned to Panigrah. There Sankalp, Nidhi, her grandparents and three priests already started the ceremony. In comparison to this ceremony a German wedding seems to be over in a blink of a moment.

The two of them have been doing rituals for more than 6 hours while family and friends were sitting around them on mattresses with blankets watching, chatting softly or simply falling asleep as me.

At the end of ceremony Nidhi was dressed in a new sari and new jewellery with toe ring. When the couple left Panigrah both families started to cry which is part of tradition. Who thought that ceremonies were over only because they were now married, better thinks twice. Sankalp brought Nidhi home but there were still traditions and rituals to follow.

Ladies Sangeet

On the morning of 15th February, Nidhi´s family came to the house with gifts and after a ceremony we all danced to drums in the court yard.

Chris & Utkarsh

Nidhi´s cousin & brother

After the lunch, we continued with the dance practice and in the late afternoon we went to the location for the final rehearsal. For this, we also wore the base-caps and jackets with hoods to complete our outfit that was quite warm especially with temperatures around 30 degrees.
We returned home to dress up in sarees, selwar kameez and ....

Chris, Sankalp, Seema

Kittu, Chris, Dimpy

Ladies Sangeet could be compared a little bit to a German "Polterabend" or wedding-eve party. Basically, both families come together in banquet hall or similar and there is a lot of singing and dancing from all participants. In our case, there were more than 20 performances - some classical Indian dances, some more Bollywood-Style.

Desi Girls

After all the performances from friends and family members, finally the bride Nidhi entered the stage for her own dance. After some minutes she is joined by the groom Sankalp. Both had hard trainings every morning to show off their savvy:

The stage performance finished with a lovely & tasty cake which I could not get enough of. Around the sangeet site there were a lot of food stalls with food from all over India and also a live-pasta cook with two version: "Italian delight" or "Indian Spice" - I tried both, but got a second and third serving from the first:-).

After midnight we returned home and changed clothes and continued the party in Pinku's room and re-designed his wall into a piece of art.

Chris, Sankalp, Guddi, Rishi, Kittu, ...

Jaipur - Wedding preparations

I arrived late on 11th February in Jaipur and Sankalp & Nidhi picked me up at the bus stop. Before we went home, we stopped by the Ganesh temple.

On the next morning, the wedding preparation ceremonies started। Everyday we had a puja (religious ceremony) in the house and a priest was coming to recite the prayers and make the offerings.

During all these days, I got to know Sankalp´s big family very well, each day more people were coming to the house to greet the family and eat with them. Nearly all the time, there were Dimpy and Kittu (his cousins from Kota) with whom I spent a lot of time. We also went shopping and eating together and they helped me to understand all the traditions and functions.

One day, we had a Mendi party and all the women got henna painted on their hands and arms. For hours we were handicaped as we had to wait for it to dry before we could remove the crust.

But the results were lovely:

In the evenings, there came a dance instructor/ choreographer to the house that got more colorful from day to day by lights and flowers. Also a lot of friends from Sankalp and his brother Utkarsh filled the house and practicing their dances for the Ladies' Sangeet. It was like in a Bollywood movie and so we danced to songs from favorite movies as Slumdog Millionaire (Ringa Ringa), Dostana (Desi Girls), Bunty aur Babli (Kajra re) and many more.

Ringa Ringa

Dimpy, Kitta and me did together a dance to Fashion Nu supported by three of the Desi Girls whose song passed into ours. Even our appearance was only for some 90 seconds, it seemed to me that it was one of the most difficult dances. So the three of us also continued to practice during daytime with the help of this vid and several others.

Fashion Nu

Pushkar

After 10 hours in a sleeper coach, I was dropped off together with Russian girl, a girl from Peru and two guys from Latin America in the early morning in Pushkar. As I found out later, the later three were all AIESEC trainees on the way to Jaipur for sightseeing - what a coincidence.

We tried to avoid the hotel-vallas and went on our own search for rooms. The first guest house had only space on the roof top, so we went on knocking on doors. Fifteen minutes later we found Shiva's guesthouse where we got some rooms. I shared a room with the girl from Peru and each of us paid 60 Rs (little less than 1 Euro).

We slept until noon, then we went to eat something and bought the tickets for the bus to Jaipur. Business done, we went to the holy lake of Pushkar and surrounded it and visited a temple on the way.

In the late afternoon, we picked up our luggage and walked to the bus stop. There we waited for our bus - it was the emptiest bus I ever used in India. Somehow this felt not very convincing, but after half an hour some Indians boarded the bus and we finally left via Ajmer to Jaipur.

(Unfortunately, there are no pictures from Pushkar, as my mobile was stolen later:-( )

The Thar Desert or How I rode a camel

Yesterday, I left our guest house - The Desert Haveli - together with Rachel, Richard and Alex to go around two corners . There we deposited our big backpacks and had breakfast. We got to know also another Chris and her friend Vincent. Together with another group we went outside the fort to some jeeps that brought us into the desert.

After an hour driving, we met our camels. They got packed with water, food, beer and our day-packs and off we went.



After only some 15-20 minutes of riding the camel, we visited the first little settlement where 100 people from a lower caste are living. We gave the kids some pens, but they kept coming to us without please or thanks, just "Rupees", "Skulpen" and "Chocolate" we heard.



Then we went back on the camel for about two hours before the camels kneeled down again and we had lunch. Vincent and me helped the camel man preparing the food: vegetables with a lot of garlic, chapatis and chai (tea). After the meal we rested till 3 o'clock as the sun was quite burning.



In the afternoon, we went quite a distance visiting another village (this time a Brahman caste one) and Alex distributed some chocolates and became acquainted with a lot of kids. Also our camels got something - water. Leaving them we headed for the sand dunes where we made our camp for the night. While our singing camel drivers (no money - no worry - no chicken - no curry) prepared dinner, we climbed the dunes for sunset. It took sometime, especially as the sky was cloudy. On top we also met the other group again who camped on the backside of the dune.


While we were sitting on the top and waited for sunset, it started to rain a little bit. That we found quite amazing as we thought we are in a desert and as we had heard that it does not rain sometimes for 7 years.



Later on, we sat at the campfire singing songs, eating and finally went to bed early beneath the stars.

This morning around 7, I woke up and I was feeling warm. We got some breakfast before we headed off again and now I felt the pain in my legs. Especially, when we started to trot in a faster pace which made me nearly fall off the camel. But we made it all back to the starting point from where we went back to Jaisalmer by Jeep.

Jaisalmer - The Golden Fort City

On the train, I got to know some British people and I decided to join them for the hotel and a camel safari. So we made our way from the train station to the entrance of the fort in the early morning (as on picture) - and walked the narrow streets to our guest house - the Desert Haveli.



After some sleep and breakfast, we booked the Safari and went to the fort museum.

In the afternoon, we went to the stadion for the Desert Festival - there we have seen some nicely decorated camels and also some men dancing on them. We returned early to catch some sleep before the safari that starts early morning.

Mount Abu

This morning, I left Udaipur by bus with a two Germans, two Spanish and a lot of Indians - after two stops on the way, we arrived around 2:30 pm in Mount Abu.



A nice place in the hills around a lake - a paradise for Indian honeymooners.
After having a look at the rooms, I decided to join the Spanish for a really simple room with Indian toilet and pay only 100 Rupees (~1.56 Euro) for the night. Then we had lunch at the hotel and went to the Nakki Lake where you can rent some pedal or row boats.
The village is surrounded by mountains, one shaped like a toad.

In the evening, we went to the sunset point. Instead of being a romantic little spot for honeymooners, it was overcrowed and a lot of people tried to sell you something to eat and other stuff. Nonetheless, the sunset was very nice with the mountains.

Next morning, I did some trekking and finally reached the top of the toad where I had an Indian woman from Gujarat directing her son how to take pictures of me:

Next, I walked through Mount Abu and climbed 365 steps to the Andhar Devi Temple from where I had a good view on the town.

Back to the hotel, I catched my stuff and went to the bus stop to catch a bus to Abu Road and from there to Jodhpur. It was quite a tough schedule as the train to Jaisalmer was to leave at 11 pm, but we reached the city an hour early so I was very happy.

Udaipur - City of Palaces

I left Khajuraho in early morning by bus to Jhansi, from there I took a train and made it in time for the overnight train from Gwalior to Udaipur. The total trip took more than 24 hours, but in the end I was rewarded by a beautiful hotel with a pool (quite cold, but I did 20 laps), nice romantic scenery and a room with an alcove and colored window.





Despite the two beds in the room, I decided to sleep on the mattress on the alcove.



In the afternoon, I made a boat ride on Lake Pichola and had a look at the famous Lake Palace and City Palace. The first one starring the James Bond movie "Octopussy".



After a round on the lake, we stopped on Jagmandir Island and I drank a sunrise mocktail in the Pichola Bar and ate some ice-cream.


After that, I went to a place called Bagore-ki-Haveli, where they show dances from Rajasthan every evening. So they enchanted the audience with a peacock dance, some puppet dancing, another one with fire and the last one with 9 pots balanced on the head of a woman.

Today, I went on a tour to see the City Palace, a garden with fountains and some other sights:

City Palace - Colored glass window

View from Moti Magri

Saheliyon-ki-Bari - garden with fountains

Khajuraho - City of Temples

After a night at the Varanasi train station, I arrived around 11 am at Satna - the railhead closest to Khajuraho. From there, I took a Jeep together with two Polish girls from Gdansk, so we could split up the cost.

In Khajuraho, I stayed in Hotel Surya which looks from the street like a normal shop, but opens to a beautiful backyard and garden. In the morning, I was taking a yoga class on the terracce - it was quite cold at 7 am. The yoga teacher was quite impressed who flexible I am.

Later on, I went to the Old Village where I could see the people from the different castes and how they are living. I also visited a school there.

In the afternoon, I went for the temples - the main attraction because of their display of erotic figures, dancers and scenes from the kama sutra.

In the evening, I returned for the sound and light show, which gives some insights to the history of the place.