Rajasthan

Well I am now on the southeast coast of India in Pondicherry, the old French colony. Saturday and Sunday turned out to be very long days. 

I befriended my tuck-tuck driver in Jaipur and after showing me the typical tourist sights he took me to Shekhawati and his hometown. Shekhawati is a historic collection of villages in north east Rajasthan. It was a traitorous three hour drive on some of the worst roads I have every been down. Because the drive was so long, Sumere let me drive the car for a while. At first I was nervous about driving in India but I got the hang of it pretty quickly, the horn is applied at every intersection and when passing. Oh and the whole driving on the left. 

Once in Shekhawati he showed me the havelis that they are famous for. Basically in the 17-1800's merchants built large houses and competed with each other to make theirs the most beautiful. The merchants used half of their house as a meeting place for business, and the other half to live in. At that time there were many Persians in the area and they brought fresco style painting to the region so all the havelis were covered in beautiful paintings. There are more frescoes in the Shekhawati area than anywhere else in the world. 

After a very hot afternoon touring the area we went to his grandparents house and slept until dinner. His aunt made an amazing goat curry with rotis and rice. After all of that we drove back to Jaipur. I did not get back to my hotel until 1 am, then I had to pack, and at 5 I checked out and went to the airport. There was one stop in the middle of India, which made the entire flight a four and a half hour journey to Chennai. Once in Chennai I had a three hour taxi ride down the coast to Pondi. 

This morning I went to look through my pictures to post a few and all of my pictures were gone. I freaked out and downloaded a recovery app and was able to rescue most of my pictures but some were corrupted, so I will post what I have, and backup my phone more often now. Thanks for all the comments, hope all is well. -Jon