showering is optional.

very optional. another reason i love india ... actually, its not as bad as i anticipated. we've had hot showers at more than half the places we've been and, mind you, these are lonely planet selections, not fodor's. (digression: fodor's was the travel guide i bought, i thought they were all the same and was too lazy to look into the matter. fodor's did us a grave injustice with one of their recommendations in jaipur, it was like a shabby amusement park for rich indians with kids and older americans. go with lonely planet, apparently everyone knows this.) its also sort of an analogy to mev's travelling style and mine. she's pretty hardcore, i'll give her that. but i've worn the same pants for about a week so i won't take guff from anyone else (about not being a tough traveller, i will take guff for being smelly.)

pushkar is grand, as mev wrote, very chill and a welcome break for jaipur, which, em, got to me. i will spare the details but just another reminder how full-on india is, an all-out "assault on the senses". sometimes you can roll with the punches and sometimes you take it on the chin. so yes, we arrived in pushkar after a train ride and a 12km bus over a mountain. the other great part about the buses is that it cost a combined 16Rupees ($0.33) for the trip. the 5 hour trip to the small village of bundi (tomorrow) will cost the two of us a grand total of $4. in a word: barbgain. pushkar is a holy village - no meat, eggs ,alcohol, holding hands, there are curfews in the town. our hostel has a 10pm curfew which we broke last night.

after a long dinner with some of heather's yoga friends from england (hardly any yanks here, though lots of !sraeli's, french), we went back to this shop where heather had wanted to buy a shirt around 9pm. the three men working were happy to see us again and got me a chair while heather talked to them about making her some clothes. as our curfew approached, the men insisted we have tea. tired and not wanting to be locked out, we demurred, but they were insistent. so, not wanting to offend, we said we'd have tea. the two guys hopped on a motorcycle to fetch tea while the 3rd showed us a photo album of something or other (not sure as he spoke little english and the captions were in hindi). they returned with plastic cups and a bag of chai tea. we sat in their shop, drank tea and talked of our names (most Indian names have good stories behind them) our families, etc. they were so warm and generous. it was 10pm and they still had to drive home on their motorcycles over a mountain on an unlit road. it didn't matter, they had guests ... one of the men ,the tailor who will make heather's clothes, spoke no english, he just smiled at us and laughed when the men translated our conversation. though the guys offered to give us a ride home, we walked back to our hostel before closing, asking about five strangers for directions and never once feeling unsafe (it could've been bc i was flexing the whole time). such is life in a holy town in india.

k, i'm off to get a 1 hour ayurvedic massage for the hefty price of $8 ... life is good!