![\"dscf1656-medium.JPG\"](\"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/dscf1656-medium.JPG\")
<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 ![\"dscf1654-medium.JPG\"](\"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/dscf1654-medium.JPG\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSince Hampi, we’ve hit up some big cities – Delhi and Jaipur, and have some assorted pics.\u00a0 The first one is the Grand Bazaar in Delhi, a crazy little strip of humanity!\u00a0 The second is the largest single piece of silver in the world, used to hold Ganga water for some Indian dignitary while he visited England, so he could cleanse himself even while abroad.\u00a0 The third if from the\u00a0huge astrological observatory in Jaipur, where the instruments are the size of apartment buildings.\u00a0 This one is Seth in front of the sundial, which is accurate to 2 seconds.\u00a0 The final one is\u00a0Pushkar, where we are hanging out and relaxing until the 18th, when we head to Bangkok.\u00a0 If you look really closely, you will see the hundreds of kites in the air, as we were here for the annual kite festival yesterday, where kite flying, drumming, and dancing filled the streets!<\/p>\n
The highlight of our last two weeks was the ‘camel safari’ we did just outside of Bikaner.\u00a0 Two Swedish girls, a guy from Boston, Seth and myself went off for two days into the desert, equipped with 6 camels, 7 camel drivers, guides, and cooks, and two large carts to haul all of the blankets, food, and beer.\u00a0 Just a\u00a0casual little\u00a0expedition!<\/p>\n The camel trek was lots of fun, as we enjoyed getting to know the funny guides (constantly getting really high), having some local boys play music by our campfire, and getting to know\u00a0the three\u00a0other travellers.\u00a0 But we also\u00a0rode through some of the poorest villages in all of India, isolated in the desert, accessible only by 4WD and camel cart,\u00a0with very\u00a0little water and food after\u00a0the drought this\u00a0season.\u00a0 These towns were the most untouched by tourism that we have seen, and the children would run after our camels, yelling ‘Tata!’ (hello) and asking for our empty waterbottles,\u00a0a very valuable commodity, apparently.\u00a0 We wanted to get to know them better but their poverty created a huge barrier, as they\u00a0were only begging from us, seeing us as\u00a0bearers of vast amounts of wealth.\u00a0 Even at night, our campfire was ringed by a group of small children hoping for a handout.\u00a0 At one point, a boy was begging for what seemed like a beer, but it turned out he only wanted the can, for use as a lantern.\u00a0 At the end, we were left with the impression that the desert is a majestic and beautiful landscape, but harsh and inhospitable to live in.\u00a0\u00a0We have a high respect for those who can\u00a0survive in\u00a0it, and I can’t even begin to understand how they could grow any crops at all in\u00a0the hot, dry\u00a0sand.<\/p>\n The trek finished up in a\u00a0town famous for its ‘Rat Temple’.\u00a0 Not sure how this all started, but someone must have started feeding the rats, and the temple became infested with hundreds of them.\u00a0 Now, they are billing it as the\u00a0“Eighth wonder of the world” all because of these resident rats, which are now very well fed and NOT afraid of the light or the tourists.\u00a0 It was not our favorite sight, especially as no shoes are allowed inside the temple.\u00a0 Perhaps it might be the 1,987,789th wonder of the world, but it ISN’T in the top 10.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, first things first.\u00a0 We finally got around to taking a picture of the brilliant powerlines system they have in India.\u00a0 It pretty much consists of a rat’s nest of wires supported just above our heads, sort of an ‘each for their own’ type of arrangement.\u00a0 People steal power, frequently lose power, and we’ve even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sethandclaire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>\u00a0 <\/a>\u00a0<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0 <\/a>\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a><\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n