Busy... beetles?

So along with the youth centre and trips to temples, we’ve been doing some pretty interesting classes and activities. This week we’ve saluted the sun in yoga, ridden camels, learned to cook(ish) and attempted to play traditional instruments. I have new respect for the humble chapatti and those who make them – you need fingertips of steel to make those things! And then there’s the challenge of getting them completely round (important note, ladies – if your chapattis aren’t round then you’ll never get married. Imagine how much your partner would suffer from the indignity of having to eat misshapen bread. Shame on you.) Camels also aren’t as uncomfortable as you might have thought (perhaps a different story if you’re a guy, I wouldn’t know), though a lack of stirrups is somewhat disconcerting. The few hours we spent with the musicians were rather fascinating; it turns out that I can more or less handle the drums, but the 17 stringed violin-type thing was a little bit above my skill level. Seriously people, how do you manage all that thinking at once?!

Everyone who has been involved in giving us these classes has been someone from Sam’s extensive network of contacts – no tourist traps for us! It’s meant some fairly intense tuk tuk rides going out to villages in the hills, as the Jeep is still with the mechanic (it is fixed, it’s just... not starting.) You’d be surprised how tenacious those little things are. We managed to get all the way up to a hilltop goddess temple, up roads that my little Mitsubishi would refuse to have anything to do with. But there definitely is a gap in the market for a Jeep-able bra for Jeep-able roads – all that shaking and bumping around gets just a teeny weeny bit uncomfortable.

Yesterday we also went out to where the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was filmed. Now, generally I don’t think it’s a good idea to go to film sets, as far as I’m concerned it only destroys the magic of the film when you see how small or CGI-ified the whole place is, but this was an interesting insight into the Indian mindset. Anywhere in Europe or the USA that had a connection to a film would have at least a gift shop and display, if not greenscreen photo set-up, neon signs, replicas of the characters etc. And it would no doubt be heaving with inappropriately dressed, camera-wielding international tourists. But this place was, in essence, precisely what it was in the film: a crumbling, badly managed hotel (and not even close to Jaipur). I suppose the set research team did an excellent job.