Big Lake
We made it up for breakfast. Today's delight was Poha - yellow, tasty rice. We had Chai too of course. We met a few fellow travellers at Breakfast. A Russian, a Mexican and a French man on his very fancy BMW touring motor bike. We each shared stories from our trip and photos of the step wells in town. We discussed the amount of rubbish they had in them and how they were not very well maintained, apart from one.
The first stop on today's tour was the fort. We didn't pay to enter as parts of it was free. It didn't seem in the best condition but the whole place is spectacular. The Chitrashala had very old paintings on the walls which were very nice though faded due to their age.
The big lake was our next stop. We walked past 2 step wells. One of them wasn't too bad but the other was used as a giant bin! The lake was pretty but again rubbish floated amongst the lillies. We passed a house where Rudyard Kipling wrote Kim. We didn't go inside but wondered how people had climbed to the top of a huge hill behind it. It wasn't long before we think we had worked out.
As we walked back towards the centre there was a huge tent in the middle of a field and loads of police. A convoy of vehicles started to drive past the tent and onto the main road. Darryl asked a policeman why there were so many cars in convoy. The policeman explained that it was a political party conference. We believed they were coming down from the top of the hill we had just spoken about.
Back in the centre we drank chai with a pharmacist and his staff whilst sitting in the shade studying the shops medicine collection. Outside we watched a stunning henna tattoo being delicately painted on a lady's hand. There really was quite interesting things everywhere! A chat with a shop owner where we bought some washing powder, followed with a chai chat with a funky bar and restaurant owner originally from Pushkar.
Back to our accommodation to rest and freshen up before going out for dinner. We headed to the same place as yesterday. We started with a pav bhaji and then saw something someone else had ordered. On enquiring we found it was Manchurian veg, so we ordered one and it was delicious, if a little spicy. The man we had asked about the food then came over and invited us to his house tomorrow...he is picking us up at 9.30am! We then went next door for dahi to cool our mouths.
Next we went to the park where the final part of the Rama and Sita story was showing on stage.
For any show popcorn is mandatory and we managed to get some. Salty with a masala flavour.
The sound from the speakers was a little painful but we lasted as long as we could before calling it a night.