Back to Jaipur

I got a bit ahead of myself in pictures (can you blame me? I mean it is the Taj Mahal). Anyhow, before I show you more pictures of my adventures from this weekend I want to show you more Jaipur. This is one of the main attractions, Amer Fort and this is the first real, live, touchable elephant I have met (didn't ride it though, Ivy please read my blog!). The fort is beautiful and sits on top of a mountain. Inside the fort there is a palace for every season and a big garden in the middle. More pictures of that soon.

Love,

Violet

Drum roll please...

Without further ado, here are some of the hundreds of pictures I took at the Taj Mahal, dedicated to Grandma for her birthday (Happy Birthday!). Yes, it really is as beautiful as it is supposed to be. And what do people do when they see pretty things? Act stupid and take a million photos of it. That's how I justify all of the ridiculous poses that were somehow necessary as well as the amount of photos that indian people wanted to take of me and with me there. Between these photos, the ones I take and the dozens of photos that people take of me on camera phones, I wonder how many images of my face are circulating India right now. I probably still couldn't compete with the Taj Mahal. That gives me some comfort.

Plenty more where this came from.

Love,

Violet

Away I Go

This weekend will add on to the long list of cool things I have been doing (like touching snakes for example). I am going to Agra to see the Taj and then to the blue city (jodhpur). That means that you won't hear from me until Monday. But I promise it will be worth it. More soon. I'll miss you.

Love,

Violet

Frazzled Violet, Frazzled Internet Connection

To use a uniquely hindi grammatical construction (because it seems like that's all I can muster these days): As much fatigued as I am by my workload and my seeming lack of progress in Hindi and about everything else here (read: walking through poop), that much fatigued is my Internet by all the things I am making it do. Unfortunately that means that I can't post pictures today. If I wake up early and it seems to be working I will do a just picture post.

Om Shanti Om,

Violet

More Mahal

My name is Violet yada yada yada... it's been zero days since I last went to a salon. I got my haircut today. I basically just went in and said keep it the same length, do what ever you want. I will post pictures tomorrow. Here are some more pictures of the inside of Hawa Mahal. As you may or may not notice it is a lot greener here. It's because the barsaat (rainy season) is finally here, and it is here with a vengeance. Apparently there is more rain in India then there has been in 20 years or something like that (I mostly made that up, but I'm pretty sure I heard it somewhere). Everything has been flooding and I have been caught in quite a few down pours. You would think this would make everything cleaner but instead it just feels like you are wading through poop. Especially in the dark. A lot of the roads are half pavement half dirt, so you hit a mud patch and it's a 50/50 chance that it is actually a pile of cow (hopefully) dung.

With that joyful image. I am signing off.

Love,

Violet

My name is violet...

and I'm addicted to getting facials at Indian Salons. It's been zero days since I last went. Today I got went to an Indian spa. I found out many things on this purely educational excursion. 1. Facials don't just stop at the face. 2. Back massages come with a complimentary ass grab (or 4). 3. Your face can be as smooth as a baby's bottom for 7 dollars. Needless to say it was awesome! I'm going to go twice a week. 7 dollars for a 2 hour facial with massage! My friend thought I had done something weird like bleached my skin. She was worried I had gotten some sort of special Indian facial with bleach as the second ingredient. Actually, I have just been so dirty that after 2 hours and half a dozen different face washes, I was clean (and fair and lovely *trademark). What does this have to do with the Hawa Mahal? Nothing! Anyhow, the pictures are from the inside of the Air Palace or Wind Palace depending on how you translate it. It was so beautiful, and such a beautiful day. It kept lightly raining and would go from overcast to sunny and back in 20 minutes. It was beautiful to take pictures of. For this reason, you will be seeing more tomorrow.

Love,

Violet

Happy Friendship Day!

Today is friendship day, or friendships day depending on who you ask. So I want to take the opportunity to thank you for reading my blog. Thanks friends. To commemorate this occasion I decided to break out the token cow picture, a feature in every India bound traveler's collection. It's hard to explain how many cows there are. Let me try: there are a whole-freaking-lot of cows and they can do whatever they want, so you will see them in the road, walking down the aisles of the bazaar, inside, outside in a box with a fox, really everywhere. The other picture is the outside of the Hawa Mahal. More pictures of that tomorrow.

Love and Friendship,

Violet