One weird moment was when P went out while Chris was sleeping. Bad idea, it was hard to get 5 minutes alone with forced her to be straight talking with many approaching men that she just wanted to walk alone. One shop owner tried to get into some conversation, refusing to go into his shop he said that she could at least shake his hand. Okay. As she did he squeezed really hard on hers and did not let go to the point P said that he was hurting her hand. He replied that he was not pressing hard on it purposefully but was trying to gather her energy. He told her he was a psychic and starting saying lots of things he thought he knew about her like. For instance, he went on a roll that over the past 3 years P has always held a dream to come to India and was overwhelmed that it had now come true. Well not really we only decided last minute on the trip, we didn’t even research it at home beforehand. Then there was fact that P had a life changing moment in 2012 and is now a new person. All this was clearly not true but P agreed to them all in the hope he would let go of her hand that she could not prize lose herself. He said he felt very connected to her and must offer her a full session. In agreeing to this he finally let go of his firm grip of her hand and she finally escaped. Strange encounter.

One evening during our 4 day stay we went to a traditional dance performance at Bagore Ki Haveli. Getting comfy on the floor a couple rows from the front, the compere for the evening introduced a number of ‘acts’ providing a little background before each one. Each time, a small group of women came on stage and performed a dance to music created by 3 men at the side with traditional Indian instruments. The performances themselves were pretty impressive, we watched women dressed in beautifully coloured sari’s spin non stop to the point we felt dizzy just watching, whilst there skirts and head scarfs floated so elegantly behind them. There was also an act where we seen them sat on the floor jingling their many arm and ankle bangles to the music. However the most impressive for Chris was the woman who ran around the stage, squatted on the floor to get a note from a platter and stomped on broken glass, all whilst balancing 8/9 bowls on her head! Very impressive. P however felt horrified that this women thought it was necessary to risk herself (stamping on Glass, with a disappearing neck with all that weight on it) all for the purpose of entertainment and so looked shamefully at Chris as he cheered her on. Apart from our differences with the last act, we both really enjoyed the whole night and fell in love with the sounds of traditional instruments here.

During our stay in Udaipur on our way to the palace we were approached by a group of young school children. We got talking to them briefly, surprised at how well their English was at such a young age. They were all so sweet and even asked P to take their picture. We both love our brief encounters with these friendly excitable kids.

One child who stood out to us was a little girl who appeared homeless. We saw her searching in bins for food and so after taking a picture we gave her a little bit of money. (see picture above) We know people say you should not do this and we usually don’t but she was clearly hungry and was trying to feed herself, not evening hassling anybody for food. Soo young too. It really broke our hearts. We did try to speak to her but with our terrible Hindi and her lack of English this was impossible.

Before visiting the famed palace we stopped by the Jagdish hindu temple briefly to have a walk around. Walking up the stairs, we could hear the sounds of singing and drums being played from inside the temple, it really added to the whole experience as we gazed up at the intricately carved towering temple. By the time we got up the stairs however, the music had finished and the congregation had completely dispersed. We really enjoyed strolling the grounds here appreciating the impressive carvings and watching the little squirrel/chipmunk like creatures nibbling away on nuts in the corners of the wall carvings.