The last night in India...

We got to India on the last day of the year...now it's past Valentines Day, and we're about to leave.  It's been a good run...the tour was out of gas for the last few days, but most of the people were too...no big deal.  The last few hotels have had food service problems...the food was ok, but it took forever to get it...like today, 90 minutes for a chicken burger.  The old TLD flamethrower got a good workout on the chicken burger team!  We head to Bangkok for 5 days, then home...this will likely be my last post for this trip.  As usual, this trip has had it's ups and downs...mainly ups.  Lots of old men for me to take photos of...men don't seem to get as old in Thailand, but we'll see when we get there!  Thanks for reading amigos...TLD out!

Fading glory...

Meet the Maharajah, we're staying at his house.

 Times have been tough for the Prince...first the Indian government gave him the shaft, and now he can't afford to keep up his palace...has to rent it out to us!

 This is a grand old place, stuck in the 20's...hand painted walls that look like wallpaper...paintings and photos of ancestors long gone...

...yes, that's an elephant head!...

...musty libraries of books that may never get read...peeling paint, all the signs of lack of money for upkeep.  The prince and his lovely wife have resigned themselves to a life of innkeepers, no longer royalty as they knew it, they look for money to continue the renovation that may stave off the auction house.  The palace was built in the 1870's, and must have been grand in it's prime...one of the first  buildings with electricity in the region!  Legend has it that the Prince shot a man eating tiger right between the eyes in the very garden we now eat breakfast in.  We are given free run of most of the palace...the storage areas that hold so many memories, now on the verge of mildew in this tropical climate...the photos of long forgotten celebrities that used to be daily visitors, hang faded and rarely looked at.  The garden, if you could call it that, still has some nice flowers...

Is this what happened to Xanadu?  Oh well, not my problem!  The food isn't too bad...lot's of mosquitoes that rip you a new one when they bite, and the beds suck...but we have air mattresses!!!  The queen of this tour is a woman named Charlotte...she's a very cool lady that is saving the world a little at a time...and that includes the Prince and his palace!  Right now Charlotte and her tours are all the business the Prince has, but with her direction, I think he can turn this thing around.  Today we drove 2 hours to some village...not the highlight of the trip, but found a few guys worth taking photos of...

 ...this is a look down one of the more affluent streets of this particular village of 100K+...

 I don't know where the hell we go next, but I'll keep you posted!

They tricked me...plain and simple!

They took me to the desert...to a place called Bhuj...Booooj....not Booze!  You shouldn't place tricks on TLD, bad things happen!  Just before we left Bhujodi, they told me were going to Bhuj, not Booze...I flipped out, I went berserk...I descended on them like a bad smell with food poisoning leaking from both ends...make that exploding from both ends!  They were sorry I tell you...turned out all that really happened except it was a 24 hour bug that took down 23 of the 24 people...it was impressive!  So these maniacs took 23 sick people out to the desert, put us in mud huts with mongoose and cobras all around...and big ass horse-like deer...don't forget those!  The sounds that came out of the mud huts that first night would have made Wes Craven proud!  Just to complete the nightmare of NO ALCOHOL (did you know Muslims don't drink...how the f do they stay hydrated?), they took us around to villages where the people sit around and darn socks all day...they had a fancy name for it...embroidery or something...go figure.  Anyway, here is Cassandra in front of our mud hut...

...and I took this pic inside, with her in bed, but without the naked parts showing...it's Muslim ya know...

...no tv, no internet, living like savages out in the desert...NO BOOZE!!!  I was going to call in the helicopter, but the little woman vetoed me....you heard it here first (well, maybe not first) I'm a pussy!  So here we are out in the desert without booze...

...there's Cassandra out looking for the toilet...and the next one is her learning how to darn socks...

...here's the head sock darner...

...they had these fancy sock darning uniforms...I couldn't make out any numbers or sponsors...and they were all different colours...maybe home and away or something...here's another one...

...I don't think these guys made the team...and weren't very happy about it!  One had to scrub pots!

I think this guy was the coach, but couldn't really tell.

This guy must have been the waterboy...he just kept bringing water!

I took this one just because the kid was cute, and because people made all those sappy comments about me!

...and here's a desert sunset just for Megan!

We're back in Bombay for a couple of days...gawd knows where after that!

Storytime...

Girls and boys, there may be 8 million story's in the Naked City...but there are almost as many in Bhujodi, India!  Story #1  This old man may have alzheimer's, or he may just be weird, but his village gave him the boot because he could no longer weave...which meant he could no longer make money to feed himself.  Things can be harsh here in rural India.  However, the good people of Bhujodi gave him a home and small tasks that he performs for the weavers every day!  He now has a new tribe!

Story #2  The matriarch of the village of Bhujodi...the general, the person that gives all the orders...the consummate grandmother!  You may notice that she likes her jewelry too!

Story #3  "The Spinner"  At 81 y/o, she spins every day....wool, cotton, camel...you name it, she spins it.  She sat on a cement floor for 4 hours spinning while we were there, and got up faster than you'd ever believe!  She has lot's of ceremonial tattoos too!  She kept asking the translator who all these fools were taking so many photos of her!

Story #4  This one I don't know about...she was selling cheap crap on the street, but didn't look too happy about it...I was afraid to talk with her.

The woman running the tour we are on is called Charlotte, and her daughter is Sophena...a real beauty, inside and out!

Trumpsized fort!

UGE...f'n UGE...I've seen big, I grew up in Saskatchewan....ok, bad example....here, I've seen Donald on TV...ya, it was a big TV, but that man's gut is bigger than most of the states that elected him!  THIS is bigger!

It's way up on a hill, overlooking Jodhpur...who in the hell puts an "H" in Jodhpur?

 In this Trumpsized fort, this single, little canon had plenty of symbolic significance!  If this fort had hands, this pee shooter would signify teeny weeny!  Speaking of Trump, is he still a moronic asshole?  We don't get the latest news here...probably a good 15 minutes behind CNN, but they think he's a sophomoric, moronic, ego-maniacal, lunatic, short sighted asshole.  The fort is very nice....and big!

I don't think this makes it look all that big, but I liked the birds...

Here's my Great, Great Uncle Daryl's hot yoga room...had hot chicks all over the place...

Speaking of hot chicks, here's Cassandra doing something...

After the big fort, we had lunch and made our way back to the hotel...which, BTW, is a former f'n palace!  Here's the pool...

...and here's the guy that keep the bad people out...

...and this is some kind of flowery thing...

Tomorrow, we fly to Bombay to take a hand to hand combat class...we learn how to kill a man with a dried mushroom in the shape of a wizened ear!  Then the next day we fly to my favourite place in the world, Booze.......can't wait to report from THERE!!!

Dye another day...

We are on this tour so that Cassandra can explore Indian testicles...er, textiles...I always get those two confused.  Yesterday, we got on the big bus and motored off into the countryside to a little village (100,000 people) called Bagru...that may be wrong, but what do you care...you're still thinking testicles.  There Cassandra turned her hands blue monkeying around with indigo...there are many things you don't know about Cassandra...like she loves to grovel around on the ground picking up old kite string just next to the pisswall...yes, just what you think it is.  There are more cell phones in India than indoor toilets.

  She bought a beautiful shawl yesterday...one with a big toenail sewn into it!  I wouldn't have done this, but she bit that thing out with a skill I found astonishing!  Don't worry, she didn't eat it.....as far as I know.   Her shawl now has a toenail hole in it...but that makes it quaint...she says!  She seems innocent enough when you first meet her, doesn't she?  So she was dyeing some stuff...napkins or sleeping bags, I lose track...and I went off into the village to get some old man shots!

After all that stuff, we got back to the tour compound where there was a band waiting for me to dance!

I didn't want to show off, but I did anyway!

I had just stuck my single back flip here...the judges gave me a 9 because my legs were apart...

Here I am waving to my adoring fans after landing the double back....twice!  They love me here! Today, we had a free day...a day we could go out and shop!...the day I put JUST ahead of  "sliding down a 50' razor blade into a pool of iodine" day.  Oh, lucky day.  We went to the pot and pan bazaar...yes, it's every bit as interesting as it sounds.  Fortunately, Cassandra caught a little interaction between TLD and one of my subjects..."Yes, I took your photo..."

..."ya, see...right here..."

"...that's a picture of me?...HEY, THAT'S ME!"

..."Ya sneaky bastard!"

He was so focused on what he was doing, he had no idea I was even there!

Anyway, Cassandra bought a bunch of stuff...and I took these...

 Tomorrow we get outta Dodge (Jaipur)...and head for Jodhpur...can't these Indians spell...who in the hell would put an "H" in Jodhpur...not as bad as putting an f'n Trump in the Whitehouse, but weird.