Hair do! Shaved art work

Another day in Nagaur


Eat your heart out tattoo artists – this body artwork can be renewed yearly! I do hope you can enlarge sufficiently to appreciate all the little different traditional items, dancing girls, peacocks etc.

Male camels do all the hard work like pulling carts and the females hang around, often in herds, producing babies and milk. The papers say there are 3260 camels, over 3500 cattle and 1200 horses at this fair and I can believe it. There was obviously lots of showing off of animals to prospective buyers and brokers and like the previous two days many of the bulls were quite frisky and the stockmen had to be pretty agile to fly with their charge through the dusty tracks between tethered animals. Apparently 1249 sales had been registered by the end of the day.


In the early morning mist we wandered around the lines of cattle, horses and camels until it was time to go to the horse and camel dancing contest. I'm not in favour of animals being made to perform but the camels especially looked as if they enjoyed it and there were no sticks in evidence and very loose reins. Some of the camels were let loose and their herdsman/trainer just danced with it using his arms and hands for timing to drums that beat out a rhythm.

Later we went into the old city of Nagaur, finding the most incredible number of beautifully ornate houses with lots of decoration and then negotiated the packed bazaar before finding the Ahhhichatragarh Fort. It is the property of the Maharajah of Jaipur and being very well conserved. It was an oasis of peace and quiet after the bazaar outside the massive walls but sad with no life within. There were beautiful faded 17th century paintings on the walls and wonderful little palaces with viewing rooms for the ladies over the Maharajah's meeting halls etc. but I found it all so soulless for there had been no effort to incorporate any life or any history for showing to visitors. There was a really efficient rain catchment area on the roof which in the dry times was fed by channelled water pumped up by camels from a well. This water then fed the hammans (hot and cold baths) and trickled down little carved stone waterfalls which made a tinkling sound and cooled the areas around – there was a constant movement of water in the building apparently and the tanks in the gardens received the overflow from the main building to water the plants in the extensive gardens.

In the evening there was a Cultural Show where we sat on carpets in front of a stage and watched song, dance, music and short plays.  It was very cold and people kept on getting up and moving around and photographers walked up to the stage to get close ups - grr.

Yusuf has been waxing lyrical about cooking – he says the kitchen is like a laboratory where the wife can skilfully change the environment and relationships within the household by judicious use of herbs and spices. I've always thought that food cooked with love tastes so much better than food that just has to be prepared because it is time or one is hungry. In Bundi the housewife we stayed with sang Sanskrit chants all the time she was cooking and hers was some of the best Indian food I've eaten since I lived in an Ashram years ago.

Can't get Picasa to work - sorry.  When I do again I'll let you know