These posts are coming fast and furious. Good WiFi and a bit of downtime allows us to catch up a bit. Sorry for the on slot.

On the mountainous drive to Udaipur, we stopped at a Jain Temple. Now these people take things to the extreme. They will not wear hard shoes because they may step on a bug and kill it. They do not eat root vegetables because the plants dies when you harvest it. They wear scarves over their mouths so the carbon dioxide they exhale does not hurt any bugs. When one becomes a holy man, they set a cloth on fire and get it very hot then blow it out and rub it over their heads to burn off all their hair then they pluck out the roots. So….. the temple outside is pretty plain but inside it is beautiful. It is made entirely of marble. There are 1444 columns, all carved with deities and other figures and no two are alike. But we were just not feeling the love. Check out #11 on the sign. It was also repeated on our audio tour….really pissed me off!

We visited the Fort in Udaipur and it was really beautiful and I regretted the decision to not pay for camera access. (At many of the attractions, you have to pay a fee to take pictures; sometime it is 50 rupees and sometime much more. At this fort it was 300 rupees (which is about $4. It only cost $6 admission. So I chose this time, to register my protest. Oh well….. Google is a wonderful thing.)

On the bus ride to Udaipur, I started looking for cooking classes and ended up signing 7 of us up for one. It was not a traditional cooking class; she cooked and explained what she was doing. We helped her roll things and chop things but she cooked for 3 solid hours, all the time fielding all of our questions. The class started at 6:30 and we ate at about 10pm!! They are Sikh’s and Buzz had a grand time talking to the husband Perry about Sikh beliefs and fingerprint reading (which Perry does as a side business.) They both had difficult Indian names so they told us to call them Harry and Perry! They have 3 children, a girl married in Mumbai, a son who travels the world (never did figure out his employment) and a second son who is a lawyer and still at home.

For 10 days in October, The Hindu’s in India celebrates Navratri which is a celebration of the Mother Goddess. We were fortunate to see little parades down rural streets and temples lit up for the celebration. The same night as our cooking class, the town was holding their big celebration so the lawyer son walked us over to see it. The women and girls of the town were doing the Kolattam, a Bengali folk dance using sticks. We felt very fortunate to be able to experience this. We were the only Westerners there.

Udaipur was a great stop. Next we fly to Mumbai (Bombay).