Rajasthan beginning

On Tuesday morning we took a 3 hour flight from Kerala to Delhi in the north of India. We were picked up at the airport by Shambhu Dayal, our driver and guide for the 9 day tour of Rajasthan we have booked. This is our second tour since we have started traveling together 25 years ago. We enjoy the independence of traveling on our own (and the lower price). However, to avoid the stress of traveling on our own here and booked this economical tour.

From the airport, we drove about three hours to get to our hotel near the Sariska Tiger Reserve. Sadly, there probably aren't any tigers left here due to poaching we are told. However, there are lots of birds, wild pigs, antelope, and snakes including cobras and pythons.

We were the only ones staying at this quiet hotel with beautiful grounds and architecture. I told the young man at the hotel who helped us to our room that we wanted to go for a hike and he offered to go with us. We took a trail from the back of the hotel going past some fields, an old Muslim temple, and up the nearby mountain. The three of us started to walk through the dry scrub land with a few trees and bushes. We walked past a very poor small village, no more than a few houses. We climbed up a rocky path passing some sheperds and hundreds of sheep and goats on the way down. As it was getting late we decided to turn around and stopped on the way back to talk to the people by the cluster of houses. We met two women, dressed with beautifully colored saris, an older man with a turban and about 20 children. The kids had attended school that day. One woman wearing a beautiful purple sari covered her head and stayed away from us. A small child was playing with clay. The other friendly woman offered hot tea (very sweet with milk) and Ana played with the baby. We asked the kids to sing a song and then we briefly sang "This land is your land" for them which I am sure they didn't understand since this group was not fluent in English. We communicated with the help of our friend from the hotel sho, although he spoke some English, was quite difficult to understand. Apparently the men were still working in the nearby fields, ripe with tomatoes, wheat, onions and other produce. These people were extremely poor and we gave each woman 50 rupees and one woman responded by offering us her beautiful shawl which we declined. We took some photos (to the delight of the kids) and continued back to our hotel.