Today is the festival of Holi where we celebrate the victory of goodness and niceness over the forces of badness and nastiness; and what better way of celebrating this than anointing each other with coloured stuff (and other stuff it turn out). After breakfast we walk up coronary hill and then on to the next village where celebrations are well underway, We wait in trepidation on the roof of a village house as random characters appear to smear coloured powder on our faces and then the raucous boys arrive(perhaps representing the forces of badness) and they have a rather amusing variation on the colour thing- they have buckets of mud and cow dung which they are happy to share around; they all seem to be under the influence of intoxicating substances but their general demeanour is very good natured. We return to the smokehouse via coronary hill and remove the detritus of holi, lunch and then up coronary hill for the 3 hour de...
Day 3 in dry, vegetarian Gujerat. Recipe for a Gujerati martini: Combine 3 parts hand sanitiser with 2 parts buttermilk and 1 part cumin powder-Stir vigorously and drink vigorously. Does the job. They take this prohibition business very seriously here and apparently all vehicles get searched as they enter Gujerat from the normal states. This morning's activity is a tour of the Calico museum of textiles-I must agree that this does not sound tremendously exciting but it turns out to be quite fascinating, so much so that the Memsaab and I will be building a loom and weaving silk saris as soon as we return to Melbourne. Lunch of course is a vegetarian thali with buttermilk and quite delicious. After lunch we take a tour of the toilet museum, where we see all the latest in Indian rural toilet design-also fascinating. Then it is a tour of a Jain temple. Exhausted by everything we veg out for the rest of the day dreaming of a big, thick juicy T-bon...
Our frustration with our "guide" means we have a shorter walk to a local temple. We receive a phone call en route from our Australian travel agent who is horrified by our disgruntlement. Of course we have to walk up coronary hill, past the usual piles of rubbish and then off to the jolly temple which has some stunning views and piles of rubbish. We spend the rest of the day in quiet contemplation.
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