October 3- from the itinerary: A full day visit of Shahpura reveals the town’s rich multi-cultural vibrancy and its fascinating arts and crafts
tradition
I was up early for breakfast and touring. Matwe joined me for breakfast. She has 2 daughters, one of which is visiting at the moment. She just came back from Victoria Falls and enjoyed that. We talked about travel and tried to solve all the world’s problems - heady stuff for a morning meal.
Pick-a and I went by car to see the local school and came across a local demonstration through town celebrating/remembering a local woman who did good works about 100+ years ago. Honestly I wasn’t excited about seeing a school, but was really pleasantly surprised. Maybe I am getting soft in my old age, but the students were beautiful, clean and very polite. I think our local schools could learn some things. The classrooms had the bare minimum, but the literacy rate in India (70%) is only just below the US (79%). What is our excuse?? BTW - there were certainly many girls at the school.
Next door to the main village school was the government girls school, housed in the palace. The palace has certainly gone downhill in the last 40 years, but you can still see some of the mirroring remaining. Later I saw a picture of it in its heyday and the family must be heartbroken with the decay.
Next we visited a local village called Sardar Tura . It was rather sad - dry, dusty and depressing. Most of the able bodied people were in the fields bringing in the harvest. We stopped at one house and saw the patriarch (grandfather) using the grinder to turn corn into corn flour. The walls of the house are built in the traditional way - mud and manure.
Local crops include:
Sorghum (what I saw being harvested as we drove)
Corn
Water Chestnut
Millet
We stopped by to see water chestnuts being harvested and had to try some as I love fresh water chestnuts. Only later I thought this might have been rather stupid. They are peeled, but grown in local water. We’ll see how stupid I was over the next 12-24 hours.
Along the side of the road we saw goats with coverings/bags over their udders. These bags were used to avoid the evil eye that might affect milk production. Unfortunately I couldn't get a photo
From here we drove to the family’s private farm where they have citrus trees, in addition to the other crops listed above. There were also some local pigs having a bath
Here are some of the local lemons.
I was treated to fresh lemonade with salt and soda- sounds awful but was very tasty. Fresh water chestnuts, home made potato chips, local peanuts and orange cake.
This lady came to join us (squirrel).
There were some amazing banyan trees in the property
On the way back we looked for water buffalo in the water but no luck. We did stop to see a pet monkey which was awful.
Supposedly monkeys travel from Jaipur to the farm when the fruit is ripe, but it must be a long walk for them.
There is a step well in the village where they get not only water, but also fish. This fish is a member of the catfish family. Not sure I would want to drink this water. As the level goes down there are steps to access it. The design looks a bit like an MC Escher print.
Spent the afternoon relaxing as am exhausted and a bit car sick from the rough roads (I hope that’s what it is and not a reaction to the water chestnuts).
The evening program is to go to see the Dhikola Fort. There were now travel agents from Experience Travel Group in residence, so we are all went together.
Tom is based in Sri Lanka and Sam is co-founder of the travel company. They are from London, but sound like they are from Australia.
Tom has a Thai wife and owns a hotel in Sri Lanka called The Mud House Hotel. Melissa runs the operations of the travel company
On the way to the fort we stopped at several shops. The jewelry shop had several beautiful silver belts. There was also a place to get custom shoes made. We stopped by to see a local artisan use traditional methods to paint fairytales.
We stopped at the Shahpura Temple
We finally got to the fort at sunset and during the tour we saw 2 civet cats (you have to look hard at the photo to the right to see the cat's face)
Here are some photos from the tour
Drinks were on top of the highest turret and dinner on a nearby roof. A waning moon eventually rose and the night was cool and breezy.
There was a nearby hill where you could see lights of people walking to the top.
On the way down we went to see where the bats hung out and there were a lot of them. I was very glad I had my boots on as we had to walk through several inches of bat guano to see in the room.
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