Juhnjunu - say what?

Thanks for the comments keep them coming its great to get feed back. Just sent yous a mail (to my little fambly). For anyone who is interested I will try to get more photos up first, I managed to get some put on to a cd rom finally in Delhi) and then i will upload them bit by bit as I discover more internet cafes along the way. You would swear my entire purpose on this trip was to find internet cafes but its a life line so I don't care how "un detached" I am being. I have so much more to write I don't know where to start. I am writing stuff in my Travel Journal I got from Delphine and Steph practically everyday. I have lots of little anecdotes to put up on here and internet cafes are hard to comeby in these desert parts. Perhaps when we head down south there will be more.

Right now I am in Jhunjhunu prounounced Joonjoonoo, a tiny blip in the Rajasthan desert. Its a small town sort of south west of Delhi on the way to Jaiselmer which is near the Pakistan Border (yes mum I am being careful), and has these vibrant "havelis" painted with colourful frescoes. We arrived by train (funny story at train station prior to departure will follow) in steerage (our mistake, we booked 2nd class) in a sleeper carriage where me and elodie both slept in the top bunk on our rucksacks-cim-pillows and with our noses touching the roof and our pashminas as blankets. So after hysterically giggling for about 20mins in an attempt to remind ourselves what the hell we where doing there, we settled down to sleep for a few hours. We might as well have tried to sleep on a galloping hourse. I think I actually took off the bed a couple of times. Each cabin was infact open to the entire carriage and was separated by a small wall and a metal grill at the top joining the partision to the roof of the carriage. We arrived in the dead of night at the Hostel not too far from teeny tiny train station and had to sleep on the veranda of the hostel in armchairs because there was "no room at the inn" until 9am when check out begins. (we where meant to arrive later that day but due to a communication breakdown we got our train times all mixed up, story to follow. After a rather nice breakfast in the garden in the scorching sun at 10am we where shown to our room. Clean, minimal, not hot water and a nice view into the bathroom for the builders who are working ont he extention of the hostel! What more could a girl want? The only bad thing is that I am sleeping in what can only be described as a Manger. I swear, the bead frame is made out of wook and very frail and the matress is made out of compacted straw and is slanting to the left. Cant wait to sleep. Today we wanderd around the old village where there are some magnificent frescos to be seen. I think we ventured into the muslim quarter because at 12 a sudden eerie ALLLAAAAAAH WAKBARA (or howver it is spelt) rang out from a huge speakerphone in one of the minerets. A clue might have also been that the majority of women where wearing light black burka type outfits but they where kind of seethrough and light and covered their whole faces. We covered our heads just out of respect, but didn't quite seem to blend in, I guess due to my big gaping, white, freckly arms.

We had a whole cortege of little indian children following us gradually getting bigger as we walked through the bustling, multicoloured streets shouting Allo! Allo! Where from? The are so cute but the got annoying after a while. Note to self: do not take out a map when lost...or else you pay the price of having 15 indian blokes big and small, crowding around you all claiming to know where you are and where you are going. Goats seem to be the animal of choice in these parts, and they come in all shapes, sizes and colours. They sort of all stand against the walls of the buildings presumably to get a bit of coolness from the stone.

The craziness was worth it though cos we saw some lovely buildings (dad are you listening) some of them dating back hundreds of years old. One guy took us into his house to show us the frescos up close. He introduced us to his entire family, including his cousin in law or something. We took photos, and they giggled when we showed them to them on the camera screen. They are all so nice here because they dont get to see tourists much. But they can get a bit wreck-the-head after a while with the Allos and Where froms.I had better go now cos the big generator outside is getting louder and making strange noises and the lights in my cubicle are flickering. There is no electricity here between 12pm and 4pm, so yet another cold shower! Which was kind of nice after our walk in the heat.