So sorry, many many things have happened since the bungee thing. We had another week or more in Kathmandu which was largely taken up with planning the wedding, applying online for jobs and nosing around the alleys of the city seeing some amazing and beautiful old temples. Then we made the move back to India with only 12 days to get our asses around Rajasthan. What an amazing place, great little trip - largely thanks to my mate Prash.
Our first day in Delhi we met up with Prash and his little bro who had flown over to Delhi for a couple of weeeks for their cousin's wedding extravaganza. And I mean extravaganza with a capital GANZA - those boys hadn't slept for like three days when we met up with them, they stumbled over to meet us bleary-eyed from an all-night prayer chanting session where the head religious chanty dude repeatedly yelled at Prash for nodding off!
Anyway we had an awesome day kicking around Delhi and Prash singlehandedly convinced us we needed to get a car to make the best of Rajasthan, then swept us over to a travel agent and - with rapid-fire Hindi - bargained, negotiated, cajoled and arranged the whole damn deal in about 7 minutes. Nice.
The next day we shot off with our erstwhile driver Suresh. Short and tubby, his tenuous grasp of English was only matched by his horrendous listening skills. Tremendous driver though, possibly the only person in India wearing a seatbelt and also the only driver we that seem to be on some sort of kamikaze death-wish. He cooly dealt with enormous camels, tractors dragging loads of hay as big as a house, speeding honking trucks, brightly painted elephants, wild rickshaws crammed with the population of a small village, trotting donkeys, lumbering oxen-carts, screeching motorbikes and basically anything you could possible conceive of, leaping out in front of you on an Indian road.
Horrible sense of direction though - the poor bastard couldn't find his arse with both hands. He got lost driving into town. He got lost while in town trying to find a hotel. Then he got lost leaving town. Every single town that is. Suresh would pull over, ask for directions from some passing kid and they'd have a 20 minute animated conversation full of sign language about where to go. He'd recheck the directions a few times, have them confirmed and get back in the car all smiles, mumbling "ok ok ok". Then we'd drive a good half block or so before he'd have the Guy-Pearce-from-Memento short-term memory failure and we'd have to stop and ask again. And again. And again...
Funny thing is we knew exactly where we were the whole time, following along with the Lonely Planet maps, but every time we tried to help him he'd wave us away with a dismissive sneer. "No sir, no madam. Not the way. We go... e-straight."
Always with the bloody e-straight.
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