Camels, Camels, and More Camels

The next stop on our tour was the city of Bikaner. This was a smaller and more relaxed urban center in Rajasthan, but it had one of our most unique experiences. To begin with, we visited the old fort that the rulers of the area used to occupy. It was really well preserved and the audio tour was quite nice.

After that, we went to the annual Bikaner Camel Festival. This was quite an experience! We were met by hundreds and hundreds of camels and camel drivers. Most were decked out in their finest.

There was an amazing parade of camels around Bikaner's municipal stadium. One of the best parts was that this event was not too touristy. The vast majority of the spectators seemed to be Indian with a few scattered Westerners. It was wonderful to see the camel beauty peagant.

There was also a contest to see who could shave the best design into their camel's wool.

We also really enjoyed the Mr Rajasthan contest that was held. I don't think that this little boy won, but it may have been a result of his attitude.

We spent a couple of hours in the hot sun, but it was definitely worth it. The only sad thing was that we had to miss the camel races that were organized for the next day because our train left too early. Oh well...maybe next year...

If you want to see more picture of these crazy camels, check out our website.

Dave and Beth

Block Printing

The second stop on our whirlwind tour of northern India was Jaipur. Again, this is a place that we've been to before, but we wanted to be sure that Emily got to experience it with us. To make us all happy, we visited a block-printing factory that we didn't have time for a year ago. Block printing is a beautiful traditional Rajasthani artform. You can buy these fabrics all over the place in Jaipur and we want to see some of it being made. It is a very labor intensive process that involves several different impressions with various patterns using different colors.

This man was a true artisan and made some beautiful pieces of fabric.

We also took a quick trip over to the palace of the winds. We saw this pink edifice from the outside when Dave's sister visited last year, but we actually had time to go inside this time.

It was a great chance to go to a place that was somewhat familiar, but see some new and interesting things. The rest of our trip to Rajasthan, though, is all uncharted territory for us.

Dave and Beth

Agra...again...

So the first trip on our travels with Beth's sister, Emily, was Agra. We arrived in Delhi and picked Emily up late before heading off to see the Taj Mahal for the third time. This first picture is about the only time that Dave left the hotel room because he got sick.

For Beth and Emily, though, the Taj was beautiful, as always. People were disregarding signs as is common practice in India, and they were able to find someone to take a picture of them.

The other mandatory stop in Agra is the great Mughal fort. Again...Dave was sick in bed, so Beth and Emily had to find someone else to take their picture in this red sandstone window.

This may have been our last visit to the Taj Mahal for a while, but it was nice to share the experience with Emily.

Dave and Beth

Hiatus

Those that read our blog may have noticed that we have had a bit of a hiatus over our winter break. The initial break came because we were busy traveling around India. After we returned to Mussoorie, it was simply a matter of laziness. We just started school today and are now back in the swing of things. The plan is to work through our backlog of blogging now that we are in working mode. We'll back-date them so that they are listed in approximately chronological order. Hopefully, we'll get caught up in the next couple of days and then start talking about our new things.

Dave and Beth

Road Trip

Well...actually we're going on a bit of a rail trip. Now that our Christmas celebrations in Mussoorie are over, we're going to be doing some traveling around the country. Beth's sister will be visiting us in a couple days and we'll spend two weeks with her. When she leaves, we will spend three more weeks traveling around southern India. It should be a great experience and we'll be sure to post lots of pictures and stories as we're able and definitely when we return after Christmas break is over. Have a happy new year!

Dave and Beth

Christmas Mountains

After our big haul on Christmas morning, we were off to the house of a friend for a potluck Christmas dinner. Most of the Woodstock staff that are still on the hillside went over to share some Christmas fellowship. We took the long way aound to their house because it brought us within view of the snow-capped Himalayas and because we wanted to wish our ayah a happy birthday and a merry Christmas (Beth baked her a birthday cake).

As you can see, the mountains looked breathtaking. We haven't posted many pictures of them of late, so we thought we'd give some here.

Even when we got up to the potluck, you could still see the mountains peaking through the trees.

But once we got to the dinner, no one really noticed the mountains because there was so much wonderful food to share.

It is always amazing how people can improvise here and make things that transport us back home to North America.

We spent a lot of time playing games and there was even a Christmas movie. On our way home, we stopped to take one last panarama from the top of our hill. It shows most of the mountains that we've seen from there. You will have to click on it to be able to see it more clearly.

Dave and Beth

Christmas Morning

We were watching closely online to see where the big guy was on the NORAD Santa Tracker last night and it seems that he found our house without much trouble. We finally opened the package that Dave's parents sent and were excited to find individually wrapped presents inside. We got cappucino mix, chocolates, books and other goodies from Santa (via the Bovens).

It was great to open these up beside the Christmas tree on Chistmas morning, but it did leave a mess.

Thankfully that mess was able to be put to good use. We threw it all into our wood stove and had a little fire to take the edge off the cold this morning. The Bovens probably didn't know what a great present that would be when they shipped it over (we burned the cardboard box, too).

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Dave and Beth