Now all I need is a flying carpet ride!

The next day, after our Taj Mahal adventure, was spent in Jaipur.  This day was very wonderful to me because I got to ride an elephant! Check that off my bucket list!  Our tour guide for the day came to pick us up from our hotel in the morning, and first took us to the Amber Fort.  The Amber Fort was quite an amazing place to see.  When we first got there we got in a line of people by the entrance to walk up onto a platform where we could hop onto an elephant!  

Amber Fort

Sonia! 

McKenna and I got to ride an elephant named Sonia.  We got to ride the elephant all the way up the hill and into the first main entrance of the Amber Fort.  I was totally spazing out with happiness for getting to ride an elephant, it was just so cool!  Within 24 hours I got to ride a camel and an elephant now I just need to ride a flying carpet and I could be like Aladdin!  Anyways, the elephant pulled up to a platform for us to jump off onto and from there we instantly started taking tons of pictures (mostly of the elephants).  Our tour guide would take us through each main square within the fort and tell us a little bit about it, but all we really wanted to do was take pictures and explore.  Our tour guide was honestly really annoying, he would have been great if he kept his mouth shut haha.  5% of what he would tell us about actually was related to the Amber Fort, the rest of what came out of his mouth was money money money, and how much he loves money and worships money, and blah blah blah!  We had lots of fun though going off on our own to explore inside the fort.  This place is seriously SO COOL! It’s really just like a giant labyrinth!  There are so many passageways all over inside the walls; we had to be careful not to get completely lost.  

Main Entrance

The halls just kept going and going!

My dream is to one day play a giant hide and seek game here, it would be so fun!  One of the places we went to in the fort, there were some people gathered taking pictures.  We went to see what was going on, and we saw these two little monkeys that people were feeding and taking pictures of.  They were so cute!  So we joined in, taking pictures and throwing them food.  I got a fun video of one grabbing food out of my hand, it was so cute!  So that made me super happy, and it was just a lot of fun running around and exploring with the time we had in the fort.  On our way out we stopped to watch a snake charmer!  That was pretty dang cool to watch.

Snake Charmer!

From there our super awesome (not) tour guide took us to a jewelry store, because we are American girls (which according to our tour guide means we have loads of money to spend constantly throughout the day) so he, being so thoughtful, took us to a jewelry store for us to spend our money.  Well unfortunately it really was a nice store that had tons of gorgeous jewelry.  So we looked around at all the pretty jewelry for a while, apparently Jaipur is known for its gems?  So we all ended up finding some jewelry that we wanted (that darn tour guide!).  After that we went and saw the Jal Mahal, it’s this pretty palace that sits in the middle of a lake in Jaipur.  

The Jal Mahal

It was cool to see!  He then wanted to drive us all around the city, but we were so tired and hungry… and sick of him, so we had him take us back to the hotel.

Taj Mahal, camel riding, and a bunch of other adventures along the way day!

Saturday morning (February 22^nd) we got to enjoy the hotel’s “American breakfast” attempt which really wasn’t too bad.  We had the same driver come and pick us up and drive us around for the day.  First stop, the Taj Mahal of course!!!  Seeing it was so amazing, it’s so absolutely beautiful it took my breath away.  

My ticket in!

At the entrance. Yep, I was freaking out!

Walking through the entrance finally getting to see it!

I know my pictures aren't that great, but it really was SO beautiful!

I was beyond thrilled to see it!  Sadly pictures don’t do it justice.  When we entered there were lots of photographers trying to get us to pay for them to take pictures of us, we got one to agree to a reasonable price and decided it would be fun to have him take a few pictures for us.  We ended up having a big photo shoot in front of the Taj Mahal, it was a lot of fun!  

It got kind of annoying though because almost every two minutes people would stop us and ask for pictures with us (what odd people! I don’t get why they would want pictures with random people when they are at the Taj Mahal!).  Anyways, we finally made our way to the entrance of the Taj Mahal, we got to go in and see the tombs which were so amazing and beautiful.  We got to walk around and admire all the detail of it; I wish I could properly describe what it was like because it really was just so amazing!  

In front of the Taj Mahal, a picture of one of the entrances right across from it.

Just admiring the detail!

After we finished we were in a bit of a time crunch so we hurried to the south exit where our photographer said to meet him to buy our pictures.  We were led down a small crowded street packed with souvenir shops and obnoxious guys yelling at us to buy stuff (because yelling at people makes them want to buy stuff).  Once the guy gave us our pictures we made our way back to the main road where we had first entered the Taj Mahal.  We were in a bit of a rush to go meet our driver so that we could go and at least grab some lunch before we would need him to take us to our bus station, so we started speed walking up the long road stopping for no one.  This road that we were on was actually pretty cool because there were these carriage-like things being pulled by camels up and down the road.  I wasn’t interested in riding in the carriage; I just wanted to ride the camel!  Seriously I didn’t realize how freakin awesome tall camels are, so yes, I really wanted to ride one!  Some of the camel carriage drivers were determined in trying to sell us a ride; one in particular was super persistent and he followed us up the road for quite some time.  We told him we didn’t even want a ride in the carriage but that we would rather ride the camel.  Then he said that we could ride the camel….. um, SOLD!!!  There was no way I could pass on this opportunity!  Camel riding, in front of the Taj Mahal, in INDIA yep yep yep!!!  It was so cool, I climbed up onto the camel and then got to ride it up the road.  I felt like I was on top of the world!  Seriously it was the funnest thing I did, it totally made my day!  

Ah! Camel!

The other two girls got to take a turn as well, and then afterwards we found our driver and had him take us to Pizza Hut!!!  Well… we now know where all the other tourists were hiding!  Haha Pizza Hut was totally packed with people; I met this nice group of people who were from Texas, it was just fun being there and meeting some people.  The pizza was great of course, after that we told our driver to take us to the bus station.  We had google searched where the station supposedly was and it looked kind of far, so we figured we would need the rest of the time to drive there, but our driver said that apparently it was super close and we had time to go to another place first.  He wanted to take us to some marble shop, we were super anxious though to get to our bus on time (we had a hotel reservation for the night in Jaipur, so we needed to make sure we caught the bus to Jaipur since it was a 6 hour bus ride away).  We kept telling him to take us to the bus station but he insisted that we had plenty of time (grrr I’ll just very nicely say some people here are quite frustrating!).  So he (with no permission from us) drove us to this marble shop for more people to aggressively try and sell us things haha.  The store was pretty cool because it had table tops and things that were made out of marble and the same gems used in the Taj Mahal.  They used patterns and designs that the Taj has and it was all quite pretty.  It was cool to look at some of the things they had but overall the experience was quite uncomfortable, so we were happy to finally get out of there.  From there we got our driver to take us to our bus stop.  I won’t go into all of the details of what our bus ride was like, but I will say it was a completely terrifying, unsafe feeling, and frustrating experience that I will never repeat.  The bus ended up getting us to Jaipur around 11:00 p.m., it dropped us off in this sketchy place so we took the first rigshaw we could find and from there we got a ride to our hotel.  I was just so thrilled to be in a nice hotel where I could feel safe again!  We each got to enjoy a real shower again, and this hotel had a mini fridge with good stuff in it haha (most importantly my Coke in it (which was needed)), and it had a nice comfy bed so we felt all better by the end of the day!  It was so great!

The Beginning of My Adventure Up North

In the last week of February we were all given a week off to travel and do whatever we wanted.  I really wanted to go on a trip to see the Taj Mahal and ride an elephant if at all possible, luckily two of the other girls felt the same way!  We got train tickets, our first train was directly from Visakhapatnam to Agra, and then coming back we rode a train from Agra to Vijayawada and from there to Visakhapatnam.  The first train adventure was a 34 hour long train ride! It was a hideously long journey but we thankfully made it there safely! We traveled from Thursday (February 20^th) to Friday night, well, Saturday morning at 1 a.m.  I was so glad we had a driver from our hotel come to pick us up; it was kind of a scary area especially at night.  It was so nice to stay in a hotel because we got to have nice soft beds and we got to take our first real showers since January!!!  It was so awesome! 

And this is how I feel after our first train ride.

An All-Nighter Indian Wedding!

We were all invited to our first Indian wedding here, of course I was super excited to go and so was everyone else! We all got dressed up in our sarees and then Durga and Sailaja helped us get super fancy by putting fancy bindis on our foreheads, flowers in our hair, and of course lending us beautiful necklaces, earrings, and bangles to wear!  We arrived around 8:00 p.m., we first went into the main building to see the bride and groom.  The inside was set up with rows of chairs all facing a very decorated stage where the bride and groom were standing taking pictures.  We got to go up on the stage to meet them and congratulate them, and their photographers took pictures of us with them.  

Here was the outside entrance.

She was so pretty!

After that we went to the other section of the party which was outside next to the building.  This was where everyone was getting food and visiting in a big open marble courtyard.  They had tons of food stations all along the sides of the courtyard with such a huge variety of foods!  We went around and visited each station completely filling our plates with delicious north Indian food.  It was delightful!  It all tasted so good, and the best part was the dessert table because it had ICE CREAM!!!  Yep, we loved that part the most; there was no keeping track of how many times we went back to that table!  

All of us with our Guru!

Seriously, this food was SO good!

While we were trying to eat our dinner, there were SO many people who would come over and just stare at us haha and many who would ask to take pictures with us.  One of our Telugu teachers had invited us to the wedding so we found her during dinner to ask her when the actual marriage ceremony would be.  She told us that the decided time for the actual marriage was at 3:17 a.m.!!!  This was the auspicious time chosen by the priests, I think this is determined using their horoscopes and something about the alignment of the stars… Anyways, basically we had to entertain ourselves until 3 a.m.  Most people don’t even stay for this part, but it’s more of just family members who stay the whole night through.  We walked around and did some exploring while most of the other people there disappeared to “take rest” till the ceremony.  It was such an interesting experience because there’s so many different rituals and things that they do for the wedding.  Once it began, the bride and groom started separated and weren’t allowed to see each other.  We got to watch the priest do some sort of ritual with the bride and her parents, while the groom was across the room doing something similar.  

Exploring on the roof, it was really pretty!

The set up for the bride's ritual.

The groom's ritual before his bride joins him.

Then the bride was carried in a basket up to the stage where the groom was and they sat across each other with a sheet in between them so that they still couldn’t see each other.  

Separated by a curtain so they can't see each other till the right time.

Yay! Time to throw some rice!

These people know how to party I guess!

After another long ritual they were able to see each other and then the priests and family members up on the stage started throwing rice on their heads.  We went up on the stage with everyone else and got to take turns throwing rice on their heads which was lots of fun!  The ceremony continued with nonstop chanting and when 5 a.m. rolled around some of us decided to go back home and go to bed!  Two of the other girls decided to stay till the end; they ended up leaving at 7 a.m. and I guess by that time it still hadn’t ended!  Crazy!!!  It was a really fun experience, and I’m so glad that we actually got to see an Indian wedding while we are here!