Indian Disney wedding

We'd been invited by our driver D. P to a wedding in Delhi the 18th, and due to unforeseen health issues we actually able to go even though we were suppose to be in Varanasi those days. We came to his family home and spent the day there, eating lunch, whatching bollywood movies, looking at photos and preparing for the wedding! He lives in a big three floor house with his parents and his two brothers and their wives and kids. 11 people all in all. They were most warm and welcoming to us and we were so happy that we had the oppurtunity to come visit. In the evening they dressed us in beautiful sarees and painted our faces before we left, our driver, his wife, his nephew and us.

Now, at this time, this year, its wedding season. Here every couple goes to someone who can read the stars and tell them what the best time to get married is, according to the stars. So every year the stars will look better at one point on the year, and last weekend there must have been thousands and thousands of weddings. D.P and his fam was invited to 4 different ones on just a couple of days. Usually there are between 800-1500 poeple attending a normal Indian wedding!! The personal wedding seremoni is just for the closest family, mostly just because it takes about 3-4 hours just the vows and the groom rides on a horse to the wedding reseption and the bride must be escorted by the men in her family and if they arrive at the wedding reseption around 11 pm, they made good time. This is all over 3 days long period. We didnt see much of the rituals though, we pretty much just ate and left. But you pass them on the streets like little mini-parades, holding up the already late traffic. There are huge buffets and people eat standing around the room, which we found rather difficult.

As it happened, just by coincidence, we got invited to another wedding the next evening, we pretty much arrived there in our westeren clothes and this was a very big wedding. It was outside, only with walls around that looked kind of like a castle. The dresses people wear are unbelievable! Someone tol me that they get invited to abour 50 wedding a year! The bride and groom are unbelieveable dressed up! I'm surprised they can move and i dont think there's a part of the brides skin that not decorated with jewely or henna (a red sort of paint, like a temporary tattoo).

Here some of the photos from both weddings, and im also trying to upland a movie which shows the second couple putting flowerbands over eachothers neck and the theres a machine spraying rosepetals on them while the little platform they stand on start turning around! (While this is happening some random india guy puts his arm over my shoulder saying, "just one photo, please, u from london? please" while im holding my camera over my head to see the true highlight of the wedding.. clearly poeple have different prioryties.

This is the point in the Disneymovie, sorry, Indian wedding, where the couple is so happy that they start spinning around while flowers rains aorund them!

The bride was escorted by to women equally pretty dressed and 6-8 men holding a little roof over her head.. While they were playing emotional music, (at least so they said:)

The only guy in India we actually asked ourselves to take a photo with was the groom of the second wedding - facinating!

DANCEFLOOR! See me? The old guy in front of me came over and got me from a nearby chair! The boys rule the dancefloors in India - awesome!

Inside (outside) at the second wedding. It was HUGE!

Entrance at the second wedding.. very facinating and a little bit scary.

Sanna, D.P and Åssi at the wedding.

The couple at the first wedding were very cute together!

Everybody is very dressed up! And I loves this place!

We loved the food! There was so much! And the best, vanilla ice cream an hot chocolate sauce!

The sweetest neighbour girl came to help us get ready

It seemed very complicated to me but the most natural thing in the world to all indian girls.

Too much Chana Masala and not enough Taj Mahal

Chana Masala, chick peas in tomato gravy with spices, was one of my Indian favorites. That was until I saw it in reverse... We managed a little over 2 weeks in India before we got sick, ironically after the most expensive meal we've had here so far. This was the first night we had arrived in Agra (15th) and our initial plan was to get up in time to see The Taj Mahal at sun rise. When you can't even really think about getting out of bed you certainly don't fancy the thought of waiting in line and pay money to walk around. When we reached our check out time at noon we asked our driver to take us to another hotel so we could relax for the rest of the day. Our over night train to Varanasi was leaving that evening so we needed all the rest we could get. Come evening time, Åslaug was feeling better but had a fever and Sanna was still sick. Our final conclusion was that we were in no condition to deal with the Indian rail system for the first time, at least not an over night train. We spendt the night at the hotel and came back to Delhi today with our driver.

The best veiw I got of Taj Mahal was from our hotel's roof top, standing on a chair. It sure didn't give me "eights wonder of the world" feelings, but at least I didn't spend 2 nights in Agra without seeing the Taj Mahal!!

13th February, Jodphur and Pushkar

From Jaisalmer we went to Jodhpur, back to the hustle and noise of a major city. We've had our defenition of small and big cities slightly adjusted, normally I would have called all the places we have been to for big! We quite enjoyed walking around in the old part of town: Small markets with big selection, deep fried yummyness and all kinds of people. In a small, hidden away textile shop we actually met the man who showed the crown prince and crown princesses of Norway around Jodphur when they were here a month ago. What are the odds!? We also went to the the massive fort overlooking the town. The veiw was amazing. We could see the residence of the current maharaja (kind) of Jophur and got a good understanding of why it's called "The Blue City".

We we're given audio guides. They were good but made us feel very touristy..

 

The last 3 days we've been exploring Pushkar. We extended our stay for a day longer, the smaller cities seem to appeal more to us! This is a holy city for Hindues, no alcohol, drugs, meat or eggs is allowed. Its centered around a lake and ghats (steps) lead down from the temples surrownding it. As I'm sitting on our hotels rooftop terrace having chai I can gaze down on bathing pilgrims and prayingsessions. The city is surrownded by mountains and has a great feeling to it. It's more quite, partly because cars aren't allowed in the city center. There is a lot of tourist here, but not the buss loads of people that load off, take photoes and load on. It has a very laid back, hippie like style. Yet again, different from everything we have seen so far in India. It sure makes us miss the real back packer style, visiting Rose from Holland in her roof top tent for 80 rupies (10 kroner) a night, I would have traded in my big, clean hotel room in a second! Mind, we'll be doing the pack packer thing for the next 5 months so we are enjoying the opportunity of a little upper class accomadation.

Pushkar from "sunset point" where people would gather on the steps leading down to the holy lake to watch the sun dissapear in the horizon.

A wedding party walking through the streets of Pushkar. These colourful women followed a marching band, making quite a racket. This is "wedding season" in India, because this is a very good time to get married (based on horoscopes). We kept seing wedding celebrations everywhere!

Yesterday Kerry, a new friend we met at our hotel, took us out to see the monkeys right outside town. We bought bananas and carrots (way too much with though initially) and pulled over by the road. As the first bananan was opened monkeys were jumping onto our open car, reaching their soft hands out for a piece. Some even ate straight out of our hands, others were more cheeky and tried to run of with the whole bag. Getting over our initial fright we enjoyed it so much!

Moustache man

We came across this guy in Bikaner. He had his moustache rolled up on his cheeks fastened with pins, and took it out to let me and Sanna hold it for a photo. It must have been 2 meters, at the very least. Afterwards he rolled it around his ears to get it out of the way. Haha! This makes the moustache obsessed guys in the military (who grew a couple of stubs on the upper lip..) pretty jealous, I'm sure ;)

S.T.D. HOTEL

Walking around in Jophur we passed the S.T.D, Hotel.. Chosing NOT to spend the night there, we had to ask our driver what it meant. Apparently it has something to do with international calls, the signs advertising it are everywhere. Oh, the small amusements.

Broken english, spoken perfectly. We've come over quite a few spelling mistakes and words here that make us double up laughing, sometimes we explain to the people around us and sometimes it's better not to.. Enjoy some examples:

Here we are enjoying Banana f(r)itter..

6 days later..

Camel Safari

Sunset in the desert

Drama in the desert!

Waking up in the desert to the sunrise was a cold experience..

Right now I'm sitting in a small internett shop that belongs to our hotel. "The Royale Jaisalmer" (http://www.royalejaisalmer.com/Default.aspx", you should check it out. Its wonderful, just as our last week has been. We were very excited to see what we had signed up for and to meet the driver we were spending 2 weeks in India with. Looking

back at the last 5 days there is no doubt in my mind that we made the right choice. Our driver, DP, is a great guy. He had been doing tours in Rajasthan for the last 10 years and double

s as a guide and answers all our (many) questions about what we see and India in general. He makes us feel safe on the road even though the traffic is crazy, and I think we have the only car in the whole of India with seatbelts in the back.. He

has introduced us to so many great people, family and friends. We've been to his uncles house in a small village and had chai (and been taken out for a ride on a camel with their neighbours!!), been dresses up in amazing traditional indian dresses by his "sister" and gone to a big babyshow

er indian style feeling like princesses. We'll post the photos later, it was quite something. We've also been to the sister's family who lives inside the for

t here in Jaisalmer and we almost feel like we are part of their family now. We like it so muc

h here we extended our stay here in Jaisalmer for 2 more nights.
There is so so much to tell, we'll get the photos out and write more later. Yesterday we actually spent the night under the stars in the dessert, with what felt like an unthinkable amount of stars above us. A little cold and very sandy, but so worth

it when the night sky and stars dissapear in a red, glowi

ng sunrise..

I could have gone on forever, but the main thing is that we are safe and LOVING India.We feel so lucky and my cheeks are actually hurting from smiling so much (and a little too much India sun ;) ).
Tomorrow we are off to Jodphur and new adventures. Hopefully more soon!

All the boys wanted to pose with us one and one taking pictures.

Our driver DP is on the far left.

Arti owns these beautiful dresses and showed everything! She is our source of information from a female point in an Indian world. Here with her 2nd daugther, Jiya!

2 Delhi Days To be scammed, or not to be scammed.

Mosque in Old Delhi at Sunset. (Red fort is behind us)

Indian women getting a Rickshaw

Åslaug and a cow on the street. ( Åslaug to the right)

Ok. so, first confessions from me! Overwhelmed barely covers it. I fell asleep in a very much moving car with cars and rickshaws and bikers and people everywere honking, and screaming and yelling, that's how tired i got from all the impressions i got! Yesterday we met Rauj (pronounced Rajo) and we met him again today. We wanted to go to the only touristoffice we could find online, and he took us. Yesterday we went to two diffrent offices and unexpectedly got an offer on a tour in Rajastan. It seemed very much too good to be true. what they suggested and edvised us to fo was to go on a tour with our very own personal driver in Rajastan. Our own personal driver and guide who would go when we wanted and wait for us and pretty much just follow out pace! We were very sceptic (and with reason i think) so we wanted to wait till the next day, we went to another tourist office, supposidly an official one, that offered us the same. And after various moment of desperation and uncertainty we went to the official one listed on the internet and we've paid about 5600 NOK (ca 40 000 rupees) for 17 nights of accomodation, privat driver and guide for 13 days, overnight camelsafari, elefantride, train ticket from agra to Varanasi and from Varanasi to Delhi again. We think we got a good deal, and the tourist man was very nice, funny and persuasive. (They're all really persuasive!)

So, during these to days we've been alone for ca 3 hours when we were dropped off at Old Delhi by our driver DP and picket up again (during witch time we were guide for one and a half a hours with a bike rickshaw guy. We met Rauj ca 10 min after we came up from the metro yesterday, 40 meters after we were shown somewhere by the frist guy who "picked us up" at the metro entrance. So we've hung out with Rauj during the days and some other backpackers during the night (we had late supper with to other norwegians actually this night). And now to the unexpectedly set plans for the rest of our India-stay:

Mandwa - Bikaner - Jaisalmer -Jodhpur - Udaipur - Pushkar - Jaipur - Agra - Varanasi - Delhi.

The only things set are train tickets from Agra to Varanasi the 16th and back to Delhi the 19th of February! How the rest of it goes we'll let you all know later!

Good night (its 01.50 local time here and leave at 8 tomorow so.. good night, and luck!

Rauj! Indian friends with VERY good karma!

Overwhelmed doesn't cover it!

The first day in India is over.. We're back in our hostel bed. Tired and indeed overwhelmed by this exciting city, but at the same time very chuffed with ourselves for not getting tricked, scammed or robbed. All the people we have met have been so helpful and we've already had some great experiences. Lunch with our new Indian friend, Rauj, Tuk-tuk through the streets of Connaught place and trying on Saris are highlights. Our hostel is not very central but good and there are lots of nice people here!

I suspect we will sleep very well tonight, we're exhausted after a wonderful day in Delhi and a 1001 new impressions to digest. Enjoy a couple of selected photos (If I actually manage to upload them, if not they will come later)! Sleep tight!