Moving around Rajasthan

The next day, we visited nearby Sariska park in the morning. We walked around with a required guide for an hour along a river and saw bird life and the skin of a sizable snake. Then we got back into the car and drove to Jaiper, Rajasthan's capital and largest city.

Jaiper is an overcrowded, chaotic city, fast growing with heavy traffic, constantly honking horns, dirty, dusty, extremely busy and commercialized and many poor people including many beggers and homeless people in very dire circumstances. It is strange and disturbing to be confronted by such beggers, some of them children or mothers with children looking hungry and dirty, and then later sit down to a delicious Indian meal.

The following day we continued on our journey traveling another 175 miles (5 hours) to a smaller city, Bikaner. There, we took a tour of the impressive fort and palace of the majaraja which lies in the heart of the city. The museum included many items from the heyday of Moghul rule in the 17th and 18th century before the British took over as well of some photos of the Maharaja and his family during the 19th and 20th centuries.

From Bikener we drove another 200 miles west towards the border with Pakistan. As one travels west the terrain gets drier and more desert-like. Yesterday we stayed in a tent near some sand dunes in a beautiful desert. We were the only ones staying in this tent hotel and enjoyed the moonlit evening and the dry and warm desert air. Around 5 pm two local boys took us on a camel ride to some sand dunes about 2 kilometers away. It was our first time riding a camel; we enjoyed the late afternoon air and the fine view, said goodbye to the boys who accompanied us on the camels, and then walked back to our tent watching the sun go down. Later that evening we went to a nearby place to hear live Indian music and watch dancing by two lovely young women wearing beautiful colorful costumes. The musicians used drums, flutes and other instruments which I don't know the name of. After the women danced for a long time and did some acrobatics , one did nervy things like bending over backwards and picking up a razer blade with her eyelids. Then, a man in a colorful dress danced energetically while balancing a large wooden thing about 5 feet tall that he placed on his head. He did all kinds of amazing dances and movements while balancing many different things on his head and also balancing things on his feet. He also danced on mashed glass (it appeared) and somehow didn't get bloody feet. At the end, the dancers invited the audience to join in and dance together (men with men and women with women), many of whom did. Then we walked back under the starry night sky to our candle lighted tent.

It is worth noting that we feel very safe in India pretty much where ever we have gone. We walk around in the village and in the desert without a guide and have no lock to our tent. The traffic on the other hand, is really something else. In India single road lanes become three way traffic sometimes, and two lane highways often spontaneously become three and four lane highways when the situation demands it. So far, at least, we have seen a great deal of cooperation among the drivers to avoid accidents and have yet to see any driver lose his temper.