Magical Udaipur!

Here we are in Udaipur! The last two days have been an eyeful and a complete delight. Neelesh is our guide on this trip and he is doing a great job of taking care of us, keeping us safe, happy, healthy, entertained, and informed. I have been to India a number of times and I am always learning something new. India is so diverse, mind-boggling, and fascinating. I am so excited to be a part of Spiritual India Journeys and to be able to share this journey with the tour participants!

Holy Cow! The cows in Udaipur roam the busy roads. Cars whiz by and take all precautions to drive around or past the cows with the utmost care and caution. Cow is Mother here in India.

Cow is S-A-C-R-E-D

She gives and gives. She nourishes. She is gentle. She gives milk, yogurt (curd), ghee (clarified butter), and fuel (in the form of dried dung which becomes fuel chips for cooking or keeping a home warm).

In Hinduism, cows are thought to be sacred, or deeply respected. Hindus do not worship cows, although they are held in high esteem. The reason has to do with cows‘ agricultural uses and gentle nature. Hindus rely heavily on cows for dairy products, for tilling fields, and for dung as a source of fuel and fertilizer.

The friendliest and kindest people in the world are right here in India. Below is a photo of a child and grandmother in Udaipur. Adults often draw kohl around the eyes of children, especially in Rajasthan, in order to beautify the child’s eyes and also, along with a large dot drawn on the child’s forehead or cheek, to help protect them against the Evil Eye.

A delicious South Indian meal in Delhi before we left for Udaipur:

All the photos in today’s blog are from yesterday. Today we took a ferry boat just like this one below to an island in the middle of Lake Pichola in Udaipur. More photos from today to come later.

Dancer’s Pose in Udaipur. As of today, I posted the last of my 56-day Yoga Challenge Photos on Instagram. It’s hard to end the challenge! I will probably continue to post a few more while I am in India and post the grand finale when I am at the Taj Mahal! It’s been a fun challenge! I will most likely put all the photos together in a collage and post them on this blog, too. A great big thank you to everyone who helped photograph me.

Our guide Neelesh loves movies! He told us that the national drink of India is chai (tea). And he said that if you see people drinking chai and talking, laughing, or engaged in an ardent conversation, you can be absolutely sure that the topic being discussed is one of the following:

Cricket (the national sport)
Politics (of national interest)
Bollywood (because Indian movies are in the veins of the people of India!)

So the topic moved from sports to politics to Bollywood movies. Neelesh had a job in Delhi some years ago as a movie reviewer / movie critic. He loved that job! He got to go to many movie screenings and then wrote about the movies. He said the movie vouchers he received from work had “0 Rupies” written on them and he always found this curious because he found the movies to have such an enormous value.

Why are Bollywood movies so popular in India?

Every Indian person grows up watching movies. 1,340 movies are released every year in India. This surpasses the number of movies produced in the USA. For three hours or for the duration of the movie, people have the opportunity to live the life of the actor! Movies are close to the heart of every Indian. They know certain scripts by heart, they know the lyrics to every song, and use certain lines from movies to greet one another, to joke around, to tease each other, and to get points across to one another.

As Neelesh was telling us about movies, he became extremely animated. His happiness was contagious. I asked him who his favorite actor is. Without a moment’s hesitation, he shouted out his impassioned answer, “Akshay Kumar”. It took Neelesh all of five second to tell us the following: “Kumar is from Delhi. He is 50 years old and he is the fittest guy in the movie industry. You know, he is a stuntman! He’s absolutely amazing.”

At the end of this tour, when we get back to Delhi, before heading to the airport, Neelesh is going to take us to the movie theater to see Akshay Kumar’s newest film, Pad Man. (No, this is not a typo! I thought Neelesh was saying Bad Man, but I looked it up and the movie is called Pad Man.)

Imagine Neelesh’s excitement when we saw Akshay Kumar’s photo on an enormous billboard at the Delhi airport:

Lastly, I just had to take this photo for my sister Zina. She’s a hair stylist and owner of an organic hair salon in Salisbury, Maryland. This guy had just finished cutting someone’s hair and was more than happy to pose for me!