udaipur

Hello friends,

John and I are in Udaipur right now. It is in Rajasthan - a city with many lakes and hills and palaces and temples and other pretty things like that. It is also full of tourists and shopkeepers trying to sell us things we don't want. So we are currently taking refuge inside an internet cafe.

We have been traveling around Rajasthan for the past week since we had a week before John's project in Delhi begins. We were in Jodhpur and will go to Jaipur tomorrow and then back to Delhi. Yesterday we saw our first elephant. It was surreal to see that huge creature making its way down the narrow street. John will post pics of it when we get to a comp that lets us do that.

Oh yeah, I didn't mention the coolest part of our trip so far. When we went to Jodhpur, our purpose in going was really to investigate a project there that we might be volunteering with. They have a school in a tiny little town outside of Jodhpur that we went to visit. We walked through the town during the day and saw the school and met the other volunteers who are working there. That evening, our host Govind, who started the school, took us to the home of his ancestors, a little bit away from the main part of the town. There, we were surrounded by fields and a few scattered houses. There was no electricity and few people around. His aunt cooked us a lovely dinner that we ate by candlelight, and we slept on the roof under the stars. Saw lots of shooting stars that night and woke up to people taking their goats out to the field to start their day's work. It was by far the best experience of our trip so far. Not sure if my description does it justice.

Ok, well that's all for now. We hope all is well with all of our friends reading back home and that you all have your power back and life is back to normal.

-sapana and john