Guess what this is ?

before you open up the extra pictures.

Festival Day – for the Moslems it is the first day of Id marking the end of Ramadan and fasting – everyone was out in their best clothes to go to the mosque and then visit with friends and parade with flags through streets decorated with bunting and twinkling with glitzy streamers. They are now on their way back home to have a feast. It is also a festival day for Hindus who in Jaipur fly kites all day but in Udaipur everyone plays with balls – mainly cricket and football but I stumbled on a game played by teenagers where they threw the ball to hit someone as in a game of touch and it was extremely high spirited and competitive. For both Hindu and Moslem it is a day for giving charity – temple steps were crammed with beggars but the Moslems give during Ramadan to their local poor and today was for those that had failed to do so. People were buying greens for the cows in the street. The were so bloated they couldn't eat it all. Kannu |(I've called him Kanna for years and he's never corrected me but today he gave me his card!) called for me at 11 and took me home to have breakfast on the roof with his family. Again special foods – a chickpea and pea concoction which was quite full of chilli and a creamy rice pudding to take away the heat and a sesame seed sweet. I took a box of Indian sweets for them and some kites, spools and a couple of rubber balls for the children. Last time I was there I failed to keep pulling their kite string and allowed it to crash – the kites are totally unlike ours, just thin paper and some bamboo to keep its square shape and most don't even have a tail so you have to work them continually to keep them up.

Kannu dropped me back to the entrance to the city where I could take photos of the cows and then I found a wonderful Moslem cemetery beside the lake which was full of thorn trees, rocks and scrub with occasional graves dotted around and others in family groups. There was hardly a grave that hadn't been visited very recently and had rose petals spread on it even though many were quite old. Butterflies, birds, insects and little tree rats were everywhere and I sat for ages by one tree and flower area trying to get some good images. A bee eater flashed down from its perch and picked off a butterfly within a few feet of me and the antics of one black headed bird, with a quiff and very red puff under its tail feathers, amused me for it kept putting its whole beak and face inside the tubular flowers.

A huge well fed bull was playing the suitor to a rather small cow who was playing coyly willing and then skittishly unavailable by turns. She eventually took time out and found a chapatti that had been left on a concrete block and he stamped his foot and raised a cloud of dust in anger and finally made a lunge. She slipped away and charged for the huge gate in the wall into the city where he chased her and caused a terrifying upset as they confronted a motorbike with a whole family on it who were coming through.

Birds, bull and cow here