...and the goings on were quite mystical.

So we all decided to take a week off school and head up to the sand-blasted and lore-soaked "North," from where I am writing this blog. How do I now find myself writing a blog the night after Shiva's birthday celebration in the blue city of Jodhpur? These are the tales you will soon hear.

Now before we begin on this MYSTICAL odyssey through the ancient land of kings (राजस्थान 'rajasthan' in hindi means the land of kings), I would like you to remember that what happens in the desert stays in the desert, I am alive, and was at no point in any immediate or long-term danger. Moving on.

So we get off the plane in Delhi around 1AM, and after witnessing some mystical guru get off the plane to a shower of flower petals, we make our way to our hotel in the Paharganj area of Delhi (note: Lonely Planet describes this area as having a "reputation for drug-dealers and assorted touts"), my friend Jamie and I alone (the other girls stayed with their host-brother of sorts somewhere else in Delhi) in what looks like a neon-lighted Blade Runner remix of an Indian Las Vegas. After the night man told us that there was 24 hour check out (a detail that later came back to bite us seeing as we had no choice but to pay for an extra night's stay or be handed over to some Paharganj Mafia) and we get a good night's sleep, we do some cool things, such as:
1) Go to the National Museum and see the preserved remains of some of the Buddha's bones, along with the sculpture of that chick with her hand on her hips from ancient Harrapan Mohenjo Daro.
2) See India Gate and central New Delhi and realize that it is so much more cosmopolitan than we could have ever imagined, evoking pieces of LA, London, and Paris.
3) Go to the National Crafts Museum and get...crafty.
4) Have some sketchy drunken rickshaw drivers almost get us killed, but hey, we made it, and for under $2!
5) Go to a South Asian Rock Festival at night in Purana Qila, a.k.a. the Old Fort, where we proceeded to go tomb-raiding and climb up one of the fort complexes in the middle of the night, with people singing yogic prayers set to the music of a late 80's Pantera cover band, with a rip roaring crowd of about 125 of Delhi's happenin' youth in tow.
6) Get awesome dinner with my friend Michael from Columbia (always nice to see a familiar face) and his rad friend Nell, who then, the next morning took us to the Old City and Chandni Chowk Bazaar, where we ate so much food at this famous restaurant called Haldiram's that we almost, ALMOST fell over dead at the end.
7) Go to a Kama Sutra-themed dance club and drink Masala Martinis.
8) See Lal Qila (Red Fort) and take cycle rickshaws home (think: two-person chairlift seats to Hell on wheels being pulled by a small man who should, in all reason, not be able to cart our fat American asses around Delhi by bicycle).

And there's Delhi for you. It was really great, definitely not the death-trap people told us it would be. We really found it (or, most of it) to be incredibly clean, safe, without too much "touting," and quite simply, impressive. But everything was to change, and get much more MYSTICAL, after a 14 hour bus ride. The fact that I was vomiting uncontrollably (probably from a bad Sweet Lime Soda), closely mirroring the after-effects of some nomadic and shaman MYSTICAL traditions, should have warned me of the MYSTICAL things that were to happen the next day, but we, all six of us, were still in the dark regarding the MYSTICAL powers of Rajasthan.

We get off the bus and arrive in Jodhpur, a city in Western Rajasthan on the Thar Desert and about six hours away from Pakistan. This city is so cool partially because it sits right below Mehranghar Fort, a gigantic fort cut out of a rock face. But what's even cooler is that the entire city is painted blue and surrounded on all sides by desert, hence the nickname "The Blue City." So I unfortunately missed the first day of Jodhpur because I was sick in my hotel room dying on the floor from Sweet Lime poisoning, and didn't get to see the Fort (don't worry, I'm theoretically going in the morning when I wake up), but today may have been one of the craziest, most MYSTICAL days of my life.

Note: my friend here, the lovely Brenda Arloa McNary, adores all things MYSTICAL. We make it a point to collect MYSTICAL objects wherever we go. At the end of the day, when asked how her day was, she replied: "That was mystical as F***!" Now, excuse the language and what would appear to be near-Orientalizing oversight of cultural and social nuances found running deep through this statement, but I feel as if there are no words more appropriate with which to describe my day than "MYSTICAL" accompanied by an "F-bomb."

We decide to do Mr. Joshi's Rural Village Jeep Safari. This is an adventure which runs from 9am-4pm and is almost nauseatingly MYSTICAL. After boarding the Jeep, which is driven by one Mr. Shiva and goes down desert "roads" at speeds no less than 50km/hr, we went to a Bishnoi village and saw the trees which the Bishnoi people defended with their lives, with over 300 of them being decapitated. Equally as important, the site was filled with peacocks (which shed their MYSTICAL feathers all over the ground) and what my friend Katie and I like to call "Hovines" and what Lonely Planet calls "half cow half horse." They are actually called something like "Boobaloos." What's more MYSTICAL than a liger, you ask? Try boobaloos.

Next, we head to a small dung hut (one of many, pictures coming I swear) where we all attend a traditional Opium Tea Ceremony, performed in a very nice man's home, with his Chappati-making mother and a bag full of Opium smuggled from Pakistan. Now don't worry, this isn't as illegal and unsafe as it sounds (or is it?), considering we were being followed around by a coach bus filled with high school-aged students from a school for the mentally challenged, and they also had the tea, but it involved a whole impressive, (dare I say MYSTICAL?!) dripping process and being ground through a SIEVE (SIEVE!!! RAHULAAA!) with an antelope horn, you know the deal. End of the story: we're alive.

Next stop: 75 year old weaver who gave us beedis (purely vile, and certainly NOT MYSTICAL Indian cigarettes made from some kind of very dry leaf that isn't anything to ingest under normal circumstances) and thought my friend Jamie was a girl, a comment that foreshadowed the discussion of yonis and linga to come.

Next: I made a bowl out of clay on a wheel propelled only by a stick and the MYSTICAL will to create mediocre pottery and sell it in bazaars for inflated prices.

Soon after that: we ate lunch in another cow dung hut, which was just delicious, and was immediately followed by a guilt-trip ploy to get us to purchase Rs. 3000 hand-woven double-sided Rajasthani rugs.

Then, upon returning to Jodhpur, we realize it is a holiday...the Lord Shiva's Birthday! This not only involves many flowers, decorations, and nonstop Bollywood tunes being blasted throughout the city, but also some fun, super-MYSTICAL Hindu rituals. For instance, surrounded by people who were obviously "bhang-ed out" (bhang lassi: (n) a milkshake-like beverage made from yogurt, sugar, and bhang, a semi-hallucinogenic, marijuana-based substance sold for use during the winter festivals by the Central Government of Rajasthan), the six of us conspicuous Americans wander into a Shiva temple, where small tin pots with holes in the bottom filled with, and leaking, holy water (which was about 3" deep on the floor of the basement room of a temple where we were all walking barefoot) were thrust into our hands. With these, our motley crew was to bathe a devotional statue covered in offerings of flowers, fruit, and money, representing the lingus (gigantic erect penis) of the Lord Shiva, who was known, among other things, to be constantly aroused but never impregnate any of his multiferous lovers. So, to repeat the image, six of us, looking ridiculous, bathing Shiva barefoot in the flooded basement of a temple in central Jodhpur. What is the last thing we need? You guessed it: a photographer for The Rajasthani Times. So I'll watch the front page, but tomorrow, this exact image, ridiculous (yet MYSTICAL) as all get-out, might be circulated to the multi-million person population of the state of Rajasthan. Ha. But before this took a turn for the exploitative, the sacred bath was a perfectly insightful, exclusive, and powerfully spiritual (not to inappropriately and a little blasphemously mention HEINOUSLY MYSTICAL) nightcap we needed to finish off our day's adventure throughout MYSTICAL Jodhpur.

Tomorrow we're all off, on another bus, to Jaipur, from where we'll be seeing the Taj Mahal in Agra and the Holy City of Varanasi on the Ganges before returning to school. I just thought I should write this now in the hotel's Internet Cafe since so many things have happened in the last few days, and it would be a shame to turn some of the most amazing things I've ever done into the chore of writing an encyclopedia-length blog three weeks later.

-Nick

Jodhpur 2/24

P.S.--Upholding my stereotype of Israeli backpackers as the most insane yet fun people to roam the subcontinent, yesterday we met an Israeli guy named Levin (I think...) who has plans to win a camel race from Jaisalmer, Rajasthan to the Pakistani border within the next week. Simple, no? Well, he has planned out a costume consisting of heavy red eyeliner, a nose-ring, and a Spandex suit, all of which his camel, who he intends on drugging with bhang via intra-hump injection (I still don't understand why he thought this would make the camel run faster nevertheless prevent it from eating three bags of Camel Cheetos sitting on its Camel Couch watching episodes of Gossip Girl) will wear too. Tonight, we run into him after apparently having a little too wild of a Shivarati, only to find that he had his name, his camel's name, the word "camel" in Rajasthani, spirals around his nipples, and a gigantic drawing of a camel henna-d onto his back and chest. He then went around wearing a Nacho Libre mask he obtained from the festival (don't ask) and scaring people in the hotel. Moral: FIND THE ISRAELIS.