I paid for a tour

Lakshmi Temple in Jaipur

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I forgot for a while how much I dislike being cold. I was well reminded in Jaipur. I stayed in Jaipur Inn's dormitory room for 2.5$ per night. It was worth about that much. The room had 10 beds in it, the floor was made of wood slats over the kitchen and the roof was made of clay tiles. There are many holes in the stucture of this building and every single one of them let the cold night air in. It is colder than I expected here in Northern India. And I am not even that far north. The one blanket I had was not enough, so for the second night I got 4. That was barely enough because the cold air would creep up through the bunk that I was sleeping on. Oh whoa is me, I am cold and in India. I guess I'll get over it. Jaipur had a plethora of things to see and I decided that the most efficient way to see them would be to pay for a tour. This is the first time I have done this. I will probably do it again. It is a good way to see a tone of things very quickly. I wont do the whole list, mostly because I don't remember half of what I saw, but I will mention my favorites. The Lakshmi temple here is not very old, made in the 80's, but it is gorgeous white marble and incorporates a number of different religions imagery. This gets me thinking about how I feel now. I have been finding myself drawn quite a bit to Buddhism. I don't think that I will ever be a good Buddhist because I kill mosquitos (just can't seem to stop), but I do like the ideas that I learned in THailand, on my meditation retreat, and I particularly like the fact that Buddhism allows space for all other religions. It is treated as a religion, but it is debatable whether it is a philosophy or a religion. I personally like it as a philosopy and I think it will serve me best that way. Ok enough of that for now. WHile I was in Jaipur a festival began that is celebrated throughout most of northern India. It is the kite festival. The kites filled the sky like a great spread out flock of birds, often times threatening the territory of the real birds there. Kids, and adults, here fly kites like professionals. The kites they use are small, very light, and totally different than the ones in North America. They take constant manipulation to keep in the air and they are difficult to steer (at least for me). The have string here that is infused with glass so that they can have kite battles and try to cut each others strings. I learned about this when I grabbed a random kite that floated down to me and tried to fly it. The string gave me a cut that I wont soon forget. Beyond that Jaipur was interesting only because of it's sites and that I met Laura Stone there. We traveled together for few days after. She is very knowledgable about travel and it is sometimes nicer to travel with someone (it has financial advantages as well). So I am going to post the pictres because I am getting tired and I haven't been typing for a while now, so my hands are actually feeling all this typing.