A Good Friday

Udaipur

Today was a day of lasts. The last “real” day of vacation. The last palace. The last real Indian meal. The last butterscotch ice cream. The last cricket conversation with a native. And the last time I let somebody stick colored powder on the back of my head.

Today marked the start of Holi, which, as I understand it, is an ancient Hindu holiday whose purpose is to throw colored powder on Daniel Lauve. As we were walking through the streets of Udaipur we saw elephants walking through the streets and people putting colors on other people’s foreheads. I didn’t want any stuff being thrown on me, so I tried to avoid the guy who was sticking people. Apparently he was going to get me whether I wanted color on me or not, because he was still trying to put his fingers on my forehead even after I refused. I tried ducking underneath his hands, and he ended up getting me on the back of my head. Now there’s three fingerprints on the back of my head—it looks like the guy thought my head was a bowling ball. And I’ve got pink on my shorts and shirt because the powder is really fine and falls all over the place.

The city palace was nice. It could have used some better organization of the human beings going through the place, though. First off, our tour guide almost got us into a fight. He was already assigned to a group of Germans and then he picked us up, offering us some kind of group rate if he could take both of us around. The Germans got really upset at him and started yelling at him before storming off in a huff. A couple of them made faces at us, but they were really pissed at the guide. If I could talk to them, I’d tell them that he wasn’t worth making a fuss over. He kept getting crossways with other tour groups, which really was more a function of the fact that the path people took through the palace had people constantly running into each other.

For tonight’s sunset we went out to an old palace that has a great view of the city and the mountains that surrounded us on all sides. The view was amazing, and it was a great place just to sit around and hang out for a couple hours. Waiting for the sunset for a couple hours sounds kind of boring, but the two times we’ve been able to do that (here and the Taj Mahal) we’ve had some good conversation and a nice respite from the streets. And it doesn’t hurt to be surrounded by some of the greatest scenery in the whole world.

Dinner was another family style Indian meal out on the lake. We ate at a restaurant that had little alcoves that offered us a great view of the fireworks that were being shot off to celebrate Holi. I had my last butterscotch ice cream, which is something I’m going to miss. Jason joined us this time, and we had a great little meal eating without chairs at this short table.

The food of the day was the mixed vegetable dish we had for dinner. I wasn’t eating meat, so I made do with the veggie items, which was just fine. I also helped myself to a bunch of naan. Naan is pretty addictive in and of itself, but on the Rajasthan leg of the trip I’ve discovered cheese naan and butter naan, which I could eat a ton of.