Small town, big city. I move in and out of daily life like falling back into a dream after my alarm clock goes off. Surrounded now by sites to see, I am more interested in sitting along Pichola Lake with it's mix of visitors. The sound of women slapping laundry, children laughing, running around in their underwear waiting for their clothes to dry in the sun, a mother in the shade carving stone, my own private laughs thinking if yesterday's sneezing cow, autorickshaws honking in the distance... In Bundi, I spent hours in Krishna's chai shop, quietly sipping masala chai, forgetting time. Now, I forget time by being surrounded by busy lives bumping into eachother so gracefully; everything occurs in slow motion.
The contrast of the age and aging of the architecture and the youth of children running beneath the arches, swinging on pillars, jumping over cracks in the once carefully laid stone road.
Getting lost down narrow back market roads, finding little treasures. I am getting used to the hectic traffic and people everywhere. Sometimes I forget to haggle my way through almonds, oranges, fresh peas. Sometimes I look like a fool. I am always getting in the way. But then I remember that it's nice to make others smile.
In the same day I can go well off the tourist trail and then watch Occtopussy at an overpriced rooftop restaurant, looking for the scenes filmed on the same streets I walked down earlier that day, the same palace I admired at sunset.
"India is a lot of things. Clean is not one of them." - Ira.
Drinking chai in a parking lot, a puppy wandered up, hungrily searching around our feet to see if we had anything to offer. Timid, he moves away each time out legs move, afraid of being kicked. A young man sitting next to us looks down, walks to the tea stall and purchases a packet of biscuits. Crouching down to the dog, he feed them to him one by one, the whole packet. I didn't know dogs liked biscuits. I'm glad I know that now. It was my favorite moment of the day.
Though the men smashing coconuts against concrete walls, throwing the shards to a group of monkeys was also pretty grand.
Our hotel is like a 3D puzzle gone wrong - every addition colliding not-so-gracefully with the room, floor, walkway, staircase, next to it and definitely not looking right. Yet, everything remains standing because, turns out, if you force the pieces together enough, they'll stay put. At least for a while.
The traveler's delusion remains strong. Really, though, I've been writing so little because my experiences just aren't translating. All the little things would slip through if I tried to describe Ranakpur and Delwara and walking down the street and eating lunch and the sunset on Mt. Abu and missing the bus and laughing with strangers and...
The intricacy and intensity is impossible to explain or capture in any way.
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