Jaisalmer

Today was India at its greatest. It was by far our most amazing day yet. We met soo many kind people, laughed very hard, and had some delicious food. what more could you possibly want? First of all, let me just sat that Indian shopkeepers tell you things are reversible, but they just don't simply say reversible, they say "look madam, this skirt, sunday/monday" and then they flip it around. tres cute. We met a little girl who was selling bracelets (of which we had just bought a bunch) and she tried to have us get more. We joked around and tried to sell ours to her. At first she started out at 10 bracelets, 100 rupees, and then went up to 3000 rupees;) it was so cute and we were all laughing a lot. then she helped us put the bracelets on, and many Indian families stopped and came up to us laughing and saying that they weren't bracelets but were anklets. We walked around town some more and some women passed us laughing hysterically. They tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to our "bracelets" and laughed. It was cute. Then we met a really nice shop keeper who was super nice and ended up just giving us cute little coin purses for free. Then we met a group of kids who wanted to take their picture with us....they asked if we were married and then shook our hands (the guys anyways). Their little brother who was probably around 5 then got really excited and shook my hand (trying to marry me;) and then ran off all very shyly. It was funny. They were quite crazy kids. We went into a shop and became friends with Nana (aka brad pitt;) who was an awesome guy. He practically showed us everything in the store and when it came time to bargain, he whipped out his calculator...I was like no no no, put that away. We'll play a game like "who wants to be a millionaire"...you can use your calculator once, your phone once, and your friend once, but otherwise you have to use your head for the price. He was a little worried about this and kept trying to go for the calculator...it was very fun and we eventually ended up getting the stuff...these people are crazy bargainers and are very serious...at one point they really seemed to get pissed at us for offering a price that they thought was too low...whatever, they wanted over a $100 for a few scarves and shirts! and then on our way back to the hotel, we met an awesome family...the kids were outside playing badminton and we stopped and had chai in their house and talked for over an hour...they soon discovered my camera and were having a blast taking photos and dressing Ali and I up...it was a lot of fun. One man from delhi stopped by and started talking to me about Hinduism and the medical problems in Rajasthan (he found out about my wanting to be a doctor) and was telling me about the problems caused by fluoride in the water. all in all it was a wonderful day and we met so many kind people that our impression of India has drastically improved...I mean, I knew all along that the tourist people were probably not good representations of Indians, but there were soo many of them and they were such good liars and cheats that it was very difficult to keep a positive head about it.

anyhoo, Jaisalmer has been awesome. It's a smaller town (population about 60000) in the desert...we spent yesterday out in the desert and Ali went for a camel ride in the sand dunes. We went with a spanish couple who we've been with the past few days and a couple of Aussie sisters and we all had a blast. We've gotten hooked on an Indian show called "dance India dance" which is basically like american idol but for dancing. It's pretty fun to watch them dance. There was a guy on the other night who had gimp legs..no problem, he stuck them behind his head and dance on his hands! it was amazing and he was actually really really good. We went to a Bollywood film...saw Rab nivada di jodi....pretty cool movie and didn't need to know Hindi to understand it;) the clothes and dances were amazing. and best of all, we've eaten some really good Indian food finally:) stopped taking the advice of Indians and went by the guidebooks;)

we're off tonight on the night train to Jodhpur. hopefully it's not as exciting as the last one. it was freezing cold. there was this guy that was the most amazing (and annoying) snorer ever and kept me up most of the night. I finally fell asleep in the early morning only to be woken up early by somone sitting on my feet on my bed...this had happened a few times during the night and I would get up to find someone sitting at the end of my bed staring at me. pissed and tired, I didn't even get up but simply gave them a very firm nudge with my knees...they moved farther down my bed, to which I proceeded with a very strong kick. they got a bit pissed but got up finally to which I was very happy;) they don't have much sense of personal space here I think which can be abit difficult for us. anyhoo, hope it's better this time and I don't get a bottom bunk right in the hallway;) we will sorely miss Jaisalmer.