Udaipur, India.....

 Our next stop was Udaipur, which we all instantly fell in love with! We found out that we were in time for the last day of a festival that was celebrating women. Absolutely everyone was involved, there was parade after parade and hours and hours of celebration! I ended up losing Brittany and Megan for an hour in the madness of the parades! I missed out on getting colored dust thrown all over me!
This man was firing off fireworks that I thought burst my eardrum!

These were some things that some locals handed us. We weren't sure what to do with them right away but realized that we were supposed to eat them!

This man was possessed by the spirit and the people were trying to get information from him from god...then the spirit left him.

This was the women godess they were praising and then as part of the ritual they dumped her in the lake!

As I stopped at a jewelry store the man asked me if I help people in my profession. I said, well yes I’m a teacher! He told me that he reads faces. He told me that sometimes I am sad but that if I travel I will not be sad and that I shouldn’t worry about my future because things will be good for me!
 This was a local man in the place we stopped for tea.

This was the man who made our chai tea. It was quite the process!

In India, unlike Southeast Asia, you are expected to tip, for everything. At times it was very frustrating but at the same time I realized that these people were just trying to make a little bit of money and had nothing else.  Udaipur was the town where the James Bond movie, Octopussy was filmed. I am a big fan of Roger Moore and it was funny because a lot of store owners had pictures with him!
Here are a few pictures from the festival.

As fate would have it, I made a poor choice and drank some water out of a bottle that had the under plastic seal, but not the outer seal. After taking a huge gulp, I realized it didn’t taste right. Unfortunately the damage was done! About an hour later, my sickness started. I was on my death bed for about 20 hours straight. While the girls were out and about, I was back in the hotel with extreme body ache, throwing up, chills and sweats, etc. I was also extremely delusional. The next day the girls told me how crazy and out of it I was. I guess I was telling them that while they were gone, I was doing all of these Indian stretches and the reason I was doing them was because if I did the right combination the cab driver would take me to where they were at……WHAT!?!?!   Yikes. Besides being sick from the water, we decided that I was also feeling some affects from my malaria pills, because I had also been having crazy dreams the past couple nights. The next day I tried to do a cooking class with the girls but I was unsuccessful. The man directed me to the “local doctor” who gave me 3 different kinds of pills that cost me $6 and said I’ll feel better in half an hour. He was a magician!
Megan and Brittany getting involved in the festival!

 There was song and dance that went on for hours and hours into the night! One lady even pulled me in to be a part of the dancing!

For those who know me well, you might not be shocked by what I’m about to say next. Throughout all of our travels, Megan and Brittany repeatedly told me that whenever I talked to a native Indian person, I talked very loud and my pitch raised a tone or two! I tried so hard not to talk loud to the locals, but I guess it was to no avail!