Last Saturday, some of my housemates and I decided to go on a small adventure to the nearby Tiger Lake and the Monsoon Palace. One of my housemates, Mike, had his rickshaw friend, Deepak, drive us around for the day, but Deepak's rickshaw kept breaking down and he kept making stops at places that we thought we would never reach our destination. After the rickshaw's tire blew out for the second time that day, we decided to just walk the rest of the way to Tiger Lake, only to make a brief stop along the road when we saw an alcohol shop in the middle of nowhere. After our pit stop, we hitchhiked on the back of a tractor that we've seen many times on the road carrying piles of dirt and we rode the rest of the way drinking merrily and waving back at the people in the village.
Tiger Lake was picturesque and peaceful. Out of courtesy for the sanctity of the place, we decided to finish our drinks on the side of the road near the lake, but we were immediately hounded by these poor children who persistently kept asking us for money. I tried to strike up a conversation with them so they wouldn't keep begging and even gave them some crackers, but that didn't work. Meanwhile, a van full of college engineering students from Jaipur who had probably just come from seeing the lake passed us by and stopped to talk with us foreigners. There were probably 8-10 of them and they were all excited to talk with us. They followed us to the lake because they wanted to see one of our housemates, Mike, swim in the lake. One of the guys said he would jump in as well with Mike because he was the only one who knew how to swim out of the bunch. It was really nice sitting on the ledge, looking out onto the lake with the mountains in the background. Good company and good times. Those boys invited us to Jaipur and we swapped numbers, upon which one of them ended up calling us the other night randomly and said he missed us. That was an interesting phone conversation.
Adding to these random experiences was our crashing of a wedding the other night. Some of my housemates and I went out for a thali dinner. We decided to walk back because we were stuffed to the max. Unlimited thalis can be dangerous. On our way back, we heard some music coming from a house and saw people dancing for a pre-wedding party. There were some guys standing outside smoking and saw us looking in their direction. They immediately invited us in and we were all pushed and shoved in different directions. The guys were all drunk, or so it seemed, and crowded themselves around the girls. They wanted us to drink beer or 'wine' as they called it and forced the girls to drink some whiskey. I had to fake the drink because I didn't want to be rude about it but I also didn't want to drink especially in front of the disapproving looks from the women at the party. Some of the boys were being uncomfortably friendly, but overall we all had a good time. The women were so nice, and the boys were...well...having a good time on their own. We insisted that we could walk back on our own (and it was hard to get across to them that we lived in Udaipur and were not tourists) but two of the guys eventually ended up following us on their motorcycles and gave us a lift. They invited us to the wedding party set for the next day, and upon saying our goodbyes, one of the guys who had given us a ride - and one of the more friendly ones at the party - gave me, or rather Suzi, his scarf as a gift. We don't know how he came up with the Suzi, but that's what he ended up calling me at the end of the night.
This was just two of the more memorable events that happened over the past week. Just another random moment in my everyday life in Udaipur that I can add to the pile. I could keep going but I'll save some stories for some face-to-face conversations. ;)
To put all of this in a few words: India is f*cken awesome.
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