Holi Moly, It's Mr. Desert!

Our next stop was Agra, home of the world-famous Taj Mahal. We lined up at 6am to "beat the crowds" but about a hundred other people also had the same idea. It was still worth the early wake-up call. The sun rising on the white marble building was beautiful, and it was still much less busy than at midday. The Taj is the "ultimate monument to love" - an emperor built it in memory of his wife who died during childbirth. In India, there are always "Indian prices" for things and "foreigner prices" - for the Taj, we paid 750 rupees each ($19 CAD), while Indians pay 20 rupees ($0.50 CAD).

Since Agra as a city doesn't have much more to offer than the Taj, we headed to Jaipur after two days. It was another city that sounded better on paper than it was in reality - it was busy and loud and probably not a necessary stop. The only neat thing we saw there was the Monkey Temple, which is exactly what it sounds like: a temple with hundreds of monkeys living around it. We even saw a motorcycle crash after being overwhelmed with monkeys grabbing their bags full of vegetables. Hand feeding the monkeys bananas, eggplants, and tomatoes was pretty cool.

After that, we went to Jaisalmer, a small town out in the desert less than 100 km from the Pakistan border. All the buildings are made of golden sandstone, including the gigantic raised fort in the middle of the city.

While in Jaisalmer, we went on a three-day/two-night camel safari. Us and our camel driver, Armand, loaded up our three camels with all the supplies we'd need and we headed out into the desert. We saw things such as the ruins of a deserted village, heaps of wild camels, large sand dunes, a castle/fort, temples, villages, and a "water oasis". Armand cooked us delicious, fresh Indian meals and we slept on blankets under a sky full of stars. It was a lot of fun, but after three days our backsides were ready to say farewell to the camels.

The first day of our safari was the Hindu festival of "Holi" which celebrates the start of Spring. It is essentially a colour festival - everyone wears old clothes and buys various powder dyes, which they dilute in water guns or just throw on each other. We were at a few small villages out in the desert during the day, so we celebrated primarily with children who loved that we shared our coloured powder. Or, they just loved getting tourists covered with dye. Who knows?

We're now in Jodhper, the "blue city" since so many buildings are painted the same shade of indigo. We toured another amazing, old fort today, the Mehrangarh fort, which is again raised above the city and provided us with panoramic views of the blue city.

Tomorrow we leave for Udaipur, supposedly the "most romantic city in India".

Since this state, Rajasthan, is home of the "Rajasthani moustache" (long and turned up at the ends), men here continue to love Craig's handlebar moustache and he gets called "Mr. Desert" or complimented on average once every five minutes as we walk around towns. Indians even tell him that he looks like a (Bollywood) movie star. Andrea just thinks it is a nice diversion from her being stared at and ogled all the time.